Pardons and turkeys

David Cassuto at the excellent new Animal Blawg has a short piece on the rationale behind pardons and the November ritual of the President, and apparently some governors, pardoning turkeys. He says, "This ritual amounts to transferring the guilt of the perpetrators on to the victims and then forgiving a token few of them in a bizarre act of self-absolution by proxy." Well said.

President Bush has granted very few pardons and commutations of the real kind, i.e. ones issued to people convicted of crimes. In the latest batch of pardons and commutations, however, he saw fit to pardon Leslie Collier, a Missouri farmer who laced hamburger meat with pesticides. (Hat tip on the source: Talking Points Memo.) Unsurprisingly, this killed many animals: a hawk, an owl, an opossum, a raccoon, seven coyotes, and three eagles. These last deaths triggered a charge under the The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act; Collier pled guilty and was sentenced to probation. (He also pled guilty to a pesticide charge.) Jonathan Turley calls this pardon "an almost gratuitous slap at even the most basic environmental protections."

Comments

[David]

Thanks for the props!