Michael Phelps Importing Banned Material

Remember the 2008 Beijing Olympics in August? Remember seeing President Bush and his wife Laura sitting in the stands before swimmer Michael Phelps won the first of his record-breaking eight gold medals?

Well, guess what those medals were made of, in part, white jade. Human rights groups say that the jade was from Burma. If the charge is true (and there is a lot of circumstantial evidence to support it), Michael Phelps took home medals made of a gem material that was banned from U.S. importation by Congress that very month—at the repeated urging of the First Lady. True, the ban didn’t take effect until after the Games, but there’s a feast of ironies in American athletes importing what is soon-to-be contraband material.