AWESOME

This year's recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom:

The 16 honorees named by the White House include Harvey Milk, the San Francisco supervisor who led an early movement for gay rights in public life and was assassinated. Also named were the late Republican congressman Jack Kemp, a onetime pro football standout as well, and ailing Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

The president's choices, who will be honored at a White House ceremony Aug. 12, include American civil rights activist Rev. Joseph Lowery and South African archbishop and Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu. They include a pioneer in sports for women, tennis star Billie Jean King; and the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court, retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Actor Sidney Poitier and singer Chita Rivera were also named. Among the honorees from the international scene are British cosmologist Stephen Hawking and Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland and a former United Nations high commissioner for human rights.

Well... OK. I wouldn't have named those last three. Or Sandra Day "Bush v. Gore O'Connor.

But you have to hand it to Obama's evenhandedness: two heroic gay trailblazers, and one closet case who fought against the gay rights that, after all, his own party refused to give him.

UPDATE: Other recipients: pretty cool.

Nancy Goodman Brinker, founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast cancer grass-roots organization.

Dr. Pedro Jose Greer Jr., founder of an agency that provides medical care to more than 10,000 homeless patients a year in Miami.

Joseph Medicine Crow, the last living Plains Indian war chief and author of major works in Native American history and culture.

Dr. Janet Davison Rowley, an American human geneticist internationally renowned for her work on leukemia and lymphoma.

Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner who has provided loans to help millions of people fight poverty by starting businesses.