SOWELL'S RECENT DEATH PENALTY COLUMN WAY OFF BASE.(MAIN)

Byline: JAMES FLANIGAN Executive Director Rensselaer ARC Troy

Like most of us, columnists have their good days and their bad days. Sometimes opinion writers find themselves facing a deadline with the only available topics being ones on which they have little knowledge and have done minimal research. This must be what happened to Thomas Sowell when he wrote his March 2 column endorsing the death penalty for people with mental retardation.

Without any factual basis, Sowell links mental retardation with everything from criminal insanity and drug abuse to schoolyard bullies. He trots out the tired urban legend about welfare mothers telling their kids to misbehave …