Tainted CEO won’t talk peanuts to Congress; George Washington Carver was proud to

When Peanut Corp. of America CEO Stewart Parnell took the Fifth on Wednesday instead of telling the House Committee on Energy and Commerce why he let salmonella-tainted peanut butter kill eight people (so far) and sicken thousands, the setting was ironic. Because it was before another House committee (Ways and Means) in 1921 that the willing, winning, inventive testimony by the peanut’s greatest promoter, George Washington Carver, propelled the lowly product of the South to world prominence.