Good for Governor Newsom

 Today the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, denied parole to RFK murderer Sirhan B. Sirhan, who has been in prison for over fifty years in connection with the assassination.  This was in the news because two of RFK's children had supported his parole while almost all of the rest of them, plus RFK's widow, Ethel, were adamantly opposed.

A snip of what Newsom had to say when he denied Sirhan parole:

California’s Board of Parole Hearings recently found that Sirhan is suitable for parole. I disagree. After carefully reviewing the case, including records in the California State Archives, I have determined that Sirhan has not developed the accountability and insight required to support his safe release into the community. I must reverse Sirhan’s parole grant.

Kennedy’s assassination not only changed the course of this nation and robbed the world of a promising young leader, it also left his 11 children without a father and his wife without a husband. Kennedy’s family bears his loss every day. Millions of Americans lost a unifier in a time of national turmoil and grief, just nine weeks after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and four-and-a-half years after the murder of Kennedy’s brother, President John F. Kennedy.

It was a crime against the United States and denied the American voter a choice. Sirhan can rot in prison for the rest of his miserable life.

This Needs No Introduction.

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Ambassador Hotel, June 4/5, 1968.

This is an excellent article about the 40th anniversary of the murder.

Miscellaneous.

A cat stranded on top of a telephone pole for five days, enduring thunderstorms and high winds, was finally rescued. (Elko Daily Free Press)
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It seems Keith Olbermann has more in common with Al Capone than he does with Edward R. Murrow.

Payback's a bitch, literally in this case.
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Why wasn't the Ambassador Hotel where RFK was assassinated 40 years ago today preserved?

After the preservationists' lawsuits and the environmental impact reports, the LAUSD agreed to pluck it out and maintain it intact. But the LAUSD's senior project manager, John Kuprenas, told me that an engineer said no way. "Hold the bus," is what Kuprenas told me the engineer said. "This plan looks kind of iffy." The fear was that if the district "tried to take it out in a mass, it'd all completely crumble," Kuprenas said.

So the pantry exists today not even as a kit to be eventually reassembled but in sample pieces -- 2-foot-diameter cores of floor, walls and ceiling, along with doors, electrical panels and the biggest piece, the ice machine behind which Sirhan Sirhan stood, waiting to open fire. It's all on 30 pallets, shrink-wrapped and stored in a secure, undisclosed location, waiting for a special commission and the school board to decide what historical institution might deserve them.

Except for some recycled steel, the rest of the pantry, along with most of the Ambassador Hotel, went to a landfill.