President Announces 2009 Medal of Freedom Recipients

Today President Obama announced the 16 recipients of the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. Read about it in the White House blog. The President states: "These outstanding men and women represent an incredible diversity of backgrounds. Their tremendous accomplishments span fields . . . . Yet they share one overarching trait: Each has been an agent of change. Each saw an imperfect world and set about improving it, often overcoming great obstacles along the way."

The 16 recipients are

• Nancy Goodman Brinker
• Pedro Jose Greer, Jr.
• Stephen Hawking
• Sen. Edward Kennedy
• Billie Jean King
• Rev. Joseph Lowery
• Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow
• Harvey Milk
• Sandra Day O’Connor
• Sidney Poitier
  
• Chita Rivera
  
• Mary Robinson
  
• Janet Davison Rowley, M.D.
  
• Desmond Tutu
• Muhammad Yunus
• Jack Kemp

You can learn more about these individuals and their accomplishments on the blog or the official press release. You can find lists of past Medal of Freedom recipients on the Senate's website.

FDA Warns Against Body-Building Supplements

Yesterday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a Public Health Advisory warning consumers against using body-building supplements that may contain steroids. The FDA claims that it has received reports indicating such supplements have had adverse effects on men such as serious liver injury, stroke, kidney failure, and pulmonary embolism.

The FDA is not very specific about which products are potentially harmful, although in this letter it does name 8 supplements marketed and distributed by American Cellular Labs.

No supplements have been recalled yet. This article in the New York Times explains that the "FDA has authority to act only after it has received reports of serious health problems associated with products already on sale and it is able to prove a serious health hazard."

The FDA's website does not mention specific reports from which it gets these health claims about the supplements. You can try searching for reports by entering the search terms "body building" and "steroids" in the search box for PubMed, the National Library of Medicine's database of medical articles. For additional government resources about health, see our guide.

Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports

Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a research agency of Congress and writes reports at Congress' request. These short reports (usually 10-40 pages long) cover recent topics of concern. This week brings us reports on Afghanistan, financial regulation, the newspaper industry, and other topics. Although these reports are in the public domain, there is no central database available to the public. To get a copy of a CRS report you can request it from your senator or representative. This list is compiled from CRS reports discovered by OpenCRS and Secrecy News:

• Afghanistan and Pakistan Reconstruction Opportunity Zones (ROZs), H.R. 1318/H.R. 1886/H.R. 2410 and S. 496: Issues and Arguments
• Afghanistan: U.S. Foreign Assistance
  
• Agricultural Conservation Issues in the 111th Congress
• Air Force F-22 Fighter Program: Background and Issues for Congress
  
• America COMPETES Act and the FY2010 Budget
• Chemical Facility Security: Reauthorization, Policy Issues, and Options for Congress
  
• Congressional Member Organizations: Their Purpose and Activities, History, and Formation
• Covert Action: Legislative Background and Possible Policy Questions
• Defense: FY2010 Authorization and Appropriations
  
• Economic Stimulus: Issues and Policies
  
• Federally Funded Innovation Inducement Prizes
• Federal Research and Development Funding: FY2010
• Financial Regulatory Reform: Analysis of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) as Proposed by the Obama Administration and H.R. 3126
  
• "Gang of Four" Congressional Intelligence Notifications
  
• Intelligence Issues for Congress
  
• Issues Regarding a National Land Parcel Database
• Kyrgyzstan and the Status of the U.S. Manas Airbase: Context and Implications
• NATO in Afghanistan: A Test of the Transatlantic Alliance
  
• North Korea: Terrorism List Removal
• Ocean Acidification
  
• Post Office and Retail Postal Facility Closures: Overview and Issues for Congress
• Preserving Homeownership: Foreclosure Prevention Initiatives
  
• Protecting the U.S. Perimeter: Border Searches Under the Fourth Amendment
• Section 1206 of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2006: A Fact Sheet on Department of Defense Authority to Train and Equip Foreign Military Forces
  
• The Size and Role of Government: Economic Issues
• Spectrum Policy in the Age of Broadband: Issues for Congress
  
• Tax Havens: International Tax Avoidance and Evasion
  
• The U.S. Newspaper Industry in Transition
  

Interested in historical CRS reports? If you are here at the Boulder campus, check out the LexisNexis Congressional database, which has reports dating back to 1916.

Not on campus but still want access to additional reports? The library has a guide linking to various additional sources of CRS reports.

U.S. Envoy Meets Middle East Leaders

Special Envoy to the Middle East George J. Mitchell is making his way through this region to discuss peace efforts. Over the weekend he met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, today he met with Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, and tomorrow he will hold discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

You can read about Mitchell's trip in today's Washington Post. On the U.S. State Department website you can find the latest update on Mitchell's travels (which includes a video clip of Mitchell speaking in Jerusalem). This July 23 press briefing from Assistant Secretary of State Philip J. Crowley discusses Mitchell's full itinerary and refutes media reports that the U.S. is considering financial or economic pressure against Israel.

For additional resources, see our guide to foreign relations.

Tracking Healthcare Reform

Numerous media pundits and blusterers are offering daily comments and sound bites about health reform. It can be interesting, enlightening, amusing, and even infuriating, but wouldn't you like to track Congress' actual legislation rather than just reading the opinions of others?

The Library of Congress' Thomas website is a great way to do this. Its bill summary page for HR 3200, America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, puts links to all the bill's minute details in one simple place: sponsors, related bills, committees, all congressional actions, and the full text of the bill as it is written so far. As you can see, HR 3200's current status is "committee consideration and mark-up session held." If you're not sure what this means, see Thomas' "How Our Laws Are Made." HR 3200 is at stage 5, "Consideration by Committee," so it still has a long way to go before it becomes a law. That gives you time to provide comments on the bill to your representative on the committee. In this bill's case there are five committees, whose web pages can be accessed from the House's website (Senate committees are found here).

You can use Thomas to track the progress of other bills as well. Use the home page to search for bills by word(s), bill number, or sponsor. To find other web resources about Congress and the legislative process, see our guide.