President pardons seven Americans

WASHINGTON -- President Bush pardoned seven Americans Monday for an array of mostly minor offenses, from a Mississippi man who tampered with a car odometer to a postal employee who stole $10.90 worth of mail. They were the first pardons of his administration.

Bush also pardoned a Tennessee man sentenced in 1962 for making untaxed whiskey; an Oregon man convicted in 1966 in a grain-theft conspiracy; an Iowa man sentenced in 1989 for lying to the Social Security Administration; a Washington state man sentenced in 1972 for stealing $38,000 worth of copper wire; and a Wisconsin minister who refused to be inducted into the military, sentenced in 1957.

Bush announced his pardons with little fanfare, and maintained a tradition by doing it near the holidays.