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Reprieve, Not a Pardon

Today’s Washignton Post has TwinSpin on Tuesday’s Presidential turkey pardon.

Dana Milbank leads off with an account of the actual ceremony Tuesday, pausing to mention PETA’s continued unhappyness with the fate of the birds. As discussed previously, shipping the birds to Disney World is but a delayed death sentence – the 2005 birds died within a year and the fate of 2006’s is unknown.

Then Monica Hesse rips the lid off the the White House turkey pardon myth. She has trolled back through the archives and concludes that the ceremony’s alledged beginnings in the Truman admistration are false, that the Trumans ate theirs.

In fact the first documented Presidential turkey pardon came under the first President Bush. bush-1989-turkey.jpg

As Hesse reports, it’s right there on the Truman Library web page.

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