New GAO Reports: Embassy Construction, Clean Air Act
Embassy Construction: Additional Actions Are Needed to Address Contractor Participation, GAO-09-48, January 16, 2009: "To provide safe and secure workplaces for overseas posts, the Department of State (State) has built 64 new embassy compounds (NEC) and other facilities since 1999, has 31 ongoing projects, and plans to build at least 90 more. In 2007, State reported the U.S. contractor pool for building NECs had reached its limit and proposed legislation to amend the criteria to qualify for NEC awards."
Clean Air Act: Historical Information on EPA's Process for Reviewing California Waiver Requests and Making Waiver Determinations, GAO-09-249R, January 16, 2009: "Emissions from mobile sources, such as automobiles and trucks, contribute to air quality degradation and can threaten public health and the environment. Under the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates these emissions. The act generally allows one set of federal standards for new motor vehicle emissions and pre-empts states from adopting or enforcing their own standards. However, it also authorizes the EPA Administrator to waive this provision to allow the state of California1 to enact and enforce emission standards for new motor vehicles that are as protective, in the aggregate, as federal government standards. Other states may also adopt California's standards if they choose."

Another New Obama Administration Website: Recovery.gov Goes Live
"Recovery.gov is a website that lets you, the taxpayer, figure out where the money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is going. There are going to be a few different ways to search for information. The money is being distributed by Federal agencies, and soon you'll be able to see where it's going- to which states, to which congressional districts, even to which Federal contractors. As soon as we are able to, we'll display that information visually in maps, charts, and graphics."

C-SPAN Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership
News release: C-SPAN has released the results of its second Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership, in which a cross-section of 65 presidential historians ranked the 42 former occupants of the White House on ten attributes of leadership. As in C-SPAN's first such survey, released in 2000, Abraham Lincoln received top billing among the historians, just as the nation marks the bicentennial of his birth. George Washington placed second, while spots three through five were held by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, in that order. Based on the results of historians surveyed, George W. Bush received an overall ranking of 36. Among other recent Presidents, Bill Clinton who was ranked 21 in the 2000 survey, advanced six spots in 2009 to an overall ranking of 15; Ronald Reagan moved from 11 to 10; George H.W. Bush went from 20 to 18, and Jimmy Carter's ranking declined from 22 to 25."

White House Posts American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
This White House Web page links to the final version, published in the Congressional Record version (PDF) - The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, inclusive of an online "form on the right to leave your comments, thoughts, and ideas." Required data: email address and name. Comments are limited to 5,000 characters.

Q. Who was the first president to visit the West Coast while in office, first to graduate from law school, lost the popular vote but became president, signed the act that permitted women to plead before the Supreme Court, has the first presidential library, and was nicknamed “Dark-Horse President”?
A. Rutherford B. Hayes, member of U.S. House of Representatives, 1865-1867, governor of Ohio, 1868-1872 and 1876-1877, 19th president of the United States. http://www.potus.com/rbhayes.html

E-Discovery Update: Revisiting ESI Agreements and Court Orders - Conrad J. Jacoby focuses on the new requirement that litigants must meet early in a dispute to discuss the scope of discovery work to reach agreement on how best to proceed with the discovery of potentially relevant electronically stored information (“ESI”).

Oscars will be announced February 22 at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood and will be televised in the United States by the ABC network.
To your health There are actually different kinds of fat—unsaturated, saturated, and trans fats. In general, avoid saturated and trans fats. While unsaturated fats are high in calories, they are considered "good" fats because they are important to your health. Not all fat is bad for you. Some fat is very good for you. The trick is to choose healthy fats and eat in moderation. healthyroads.com

Journal of Legal Analysis: New Open-Access Law Journal Launched
"...the Journal of Legal Analysis (JLA) is a new open-access law journal co-published by Harvard University Press (HUP) and the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business at Harvard Law School. For the record, this is the first new journal we've published in thirty years...articles will be posted, for free, as soon as they are ready for publication. In addition, we're hoping the journal fills a gap in the legal publishing landscape by providing a peer-reviewed, faculty-edited journal that covers the entire academy."

Quote
You should eat to live, not live to eat.
You should work to live, not live to work.