Obama pardons pair of gobblers for Thanksgiving

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has pardoned two plump turkeys in an annual holiday rite.

The official national Thanksgiving turkey is a 19-week-old, 45-pound bird named Liberty. Its alternate, also spared, is a turkey of the same age and size named Peace. Both birds hail from Minnesota.

The president commented that Thanksgiving is a favorite holiday for people, but not for turkeys: "They don't have it so good."

Obama jokingly cast his pardon as yet another executive action in a string of his "We Can't Wait" initiatives.

The origin of the presidential turkey pardon is a topic of some dispute. Harry Truman is often cited as the first president to have done it — in fact, President Bill Clinton even said so in his own 1997 pardoning ceremony — but the Truman Library has said they have no record of such an incident.

And Abraham Lincoln once pardoned a turkey that his son Tad had grown fond of — but that was a Christmas turkey.

First Read: Beg your (turkey) pardon

According to the Los Angeles Times, it may actually have been President John F. Kennedy who issued the first presidential turkey pardon. A Times article dated Nov. 20, 1963, says that Kennedy took a look at a “frightened, panting” tom turkey wearing a sign around its neck reading “Good eating, Mr. President” and said, “We’ll just let this one grow.”

As for Liberty and Peace, instead of landing on the White House dinner table, they’re headed to Mount Vernon, Va., where they’ll be part of a Christmas tourist attraction at George Washington’s historic home. After that, they’ll live out their days in peace (if not liberty) in a special enclosure.