Ah, Bill Clinton. I’d almost forgotten about all the great hoaxes, urban legends and miscellaneous crap that was circulating the Internet back in the heady days of the Dot Boom. Now that his wife is looking to make a presidential run, it’s all floating back to the surface, as is illustrated by the email alleging that Bill Clinton is the first pardoned felon ever to server as the president of the United States. It’s alleged that he broke the law by dodging the draft, and then was pardoned as part of Jimmy Carter’s blanket draft-dodging pardon in 1977.
Snopes.com has an excellent debunking of this e-mail, pointing out that while he may have used political favors and broken promises to avoid the draft, Bill Clinton never officially broke the law. If he didn’t break the law, then he wasn’t a felon … and he had no reason to be pardoned.