John Hinckley’s Request: The New York Times finds “disconcerting” a report that St. Elizabeth Hospital officials are supporting John Hinckley Jr.’s request for passes for unsupervised visits with his parents. Hinckley has been walking unescorted around hospital grounds without incident for years and for the past six months has taken supervised field trips to area restaurants and shopping malls. The Times, in a remarkably unwarranted and unjustified editorial position, IMHO, opines that skepticism about Hinckley’s progress should be preserved and that “the decision should not be based solely on the advice of hospital doctors.”