On Tuesday, Nov. 20, our president pardoned “May” and “Flower,” two turkeys supposedly spared the carving blade this Thanksgiving.
However, Bush doesn’t have an especially good track record with these types of things. As Jordan Smith wrote back in 2005:
While governor, Bush presided over 152 executions and erred on the side of life only one time, in June 1998, when he commuted the death sentence of confessed serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. (Lucas died of natural causes in 2001.) More egregiously, in a 1999 interview with the now-defunct Talk magazine, Bush mocked executed killer Karla Faye Tucker, who he claimed pleaded for his mercy during a television interview with Larry King. “Please, don’t kill me,” Bush said she’d begged, although Tucker never made that plea.
Since then, Bush’s become more acquainted with the pardon pen; this year, he pardoned Scooter Libby for his role in outing undercover nuke-nonproliferation spy Valerie Plame; as Richard Whittaker points out below, according to Scott McClellan’s new bio, the prez himself was in on the bazboozlement. (Update: No, Scotty was just bullshitting. Lovely!)
Happy Thanksgiving.
This article appears in November 16 • 2007.