Senator Barbara Mikulski received the nation’s highest civilian honor last night at the White House.
President Barak Obama presented the Medal of Freedom to the Maryland Democrat along with such notables as filmmaker Steven Spielberg and singer-songwriter
Barbara Streisand along with baseball greats Willie Mays and Yogi Berra.
There were seventeen in all.
Mikulski, who has decided not to run for re-election, is considered the Dean of Maryland’s congressional delegation and is the longest serving woman on Capitol Hill.
Having risen as a daughter of a Baltimore grocer family she achieved her election in the Senate in 1986.
A fierce advocate the President noted “you don’t want to get on the wrong side of Barbara Mikulski.”
The president noted that she led the successful passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Act that extended time limitations for suing an employer over wage discrimination.
