Free Republic

The New York Times encouraged a reader last week to “help” a 97-year-old woman with advanced memory loss — who is “becoming nearly impossible to communicate with” — to complete her ballot. “When the situation is hazy, my inclination would be to err on the side of helping someone to vote, because voting is such a central form of civic participation,” wrote the Times’ “Ethicist” Columnist Kwame Anthony Appiah. The Problem A reader wrote the Times, saying the grandmother has “advanced” Alzheimer’s and hearing loss. The reader wanted to know if it would be “unethical” to help the elderly woman...

The Republican-led Senate has voted to block an Obama-era regulation that would prevent an estimated 75,000 people with mental disorders from being able to purchase a firearm. The 57 to 43 vote to revoke the regulation now sends the measure to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it. …

ABERDEEN, Wash. -- The mother of a 3-year-old boy is furious that a man wasn't arrested after he allegedly assaulted the child at an Aberdeen playground. The suspect is developmentally disabled, and prosecutors say that presents a challenging legal issue. Three-year-old Matthew Svoboda was playing at the park Tuesday when things got ugly. The boy's family claims a 27-year-old man started attacking the child without warning. "He pulled him off that with one arm and then he started hitting him, either with a closed fist or an open hand," said Matthew's brother, Toby Svoboda. The boy's mother, Isabel Svoboda, watched...

Convicted killer Johnny Paul Penry, whose case helped spark national debate over whether mentally impaired inmates could be executed, had his death sentence overturned for the third time Wednesday. A divided Texas Court of Criminal Appeals sent the case back to trial for a new punishment phase in the 1979 slaying of an East Texas woman. The court ruling said jurors during his most recent retrial may not have properly considered his claims of mental impairment. Over more than a decade, the uneducated laborer became the face of mentally impaired killers across the country, winning two reversals from the U.S....