It looks like President Bush is getting back to the United States just in time...no, not to shepherd those spending bills through Congress so that the government isn't facing fiscal crisis in January. Instead, President Bush is getting back from his round of Asian diplomacy just in time to stand before the cameras and pardon a turkey.

It's that time of year - tomorrow morning, President Bush will carry out the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation, a time-honored tradition where the President of the United States of America anoints two turkeys as inedible. They are then retired to a Disneyland where they get to live out their natural lives. This year, some one at the White House web section decided to put up a banner on the front page of the White House website that reads "Gobble the Vote." I hear they're inviting the Florida Secretary of State's office to demonstrate the proper vote gobbling technique.

OK, the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardon is a sweet tradition carried out by presidents forever, or, in this case 59 years. Just as Ford pardoned Nixon, presidents pardon turkeys as a matter of course. Under the Bush presidency, it's time that it stop; more than that, it's time that the media stop giving this sham act such fawning attention.

For much of the day, the limited doses of news that Americans will get about our Unitary Executive will be limited by the moments devoted to the damn turkeys (two get spared the knife; one is ruled the alternate in case it gets stage fright). Instead of reporting on critical decisions being made - like our exiting Congress refusing to finish their jobs and pass the spending bills - we'll hear President Bush yucking it up while certifying that Ben and Franklin, or Washington and Lincoln, or Corn and Copia (these names are for real - they are this year's options) are very nice turkeys.

But I think there's a certain moral authority that goes with the pardoning of the turkey. Every year, it's a reminder that our president is ultimately a decent man who wants us to think about what brings us together during Thanksgiving. Right now, we have a President that has encouraged Americans to be further divided, and it's hard to believe that he's just a decent family man.

What's more, turkeys are about the only thing that George W. Bush has ever pardoned. I can't do any better than to point to Alan Berlow's take on his performance as Governor of Texas, alongside his trusty Secretary of State Alberto Gonzales in which he considered 153 cases for execution. Berlow wrote that Bush and Gonzales were faced with "as many as two executions a week, as many as eight in a single month...we have access to Bush's daily appointment logs -- which show that he rarely spent more than 30 minutes on an execution briefing -- and we have Gonzales' own files, which show that he did not send Bush a clemency petition laying out a defendant's best arguments for a pardon on even one occasion. Most important, we have Gonzales' actual execution case summaries on which Bush relied in making his decisions to proceed with more than 99 percent of the death warrants that landed on his desk."

Our president has proven himself incapable of taking clemency seriously as an option when deciding whether or not a human life should be taken. By humorously sparing two pre-selected turkeys from the butcher's blade, President Bush makes a mockery of the men whose executions he approved in Texas. Torturers carry out mock executions; President Bush conducts a mock pardon every year. And by covering the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation in such a fawning manner, the media helps the president mock justice and innocence.

If you're watching CNN or Fox today, and they're making a big deal about "gobble the vote," turn off your TV. President Bush's efforts to paint himself as a family man preparing to enjoy the holiday with his loved ones belies the violence that he has personally committed. Don't pardon his awful decisions to execute so many human beings by watching him pardon turkeys.