By Jonathan Miller, on Thu Apr 21, 2011 at 5:00 PM ET
Thank Goodness It’s Almost Friday…
Friday at 8:30 AM, means it is another debut of a contributing recovering politician. Tomorrow’s writer secured his party’s nomination for a statewide office, and almost won the general election against a tidal wave election for the opposite party. He also happens to be a published author of an outstanding book on one of the greatest moments in American history — the Berlin Airlift. You will enjoy his well-considered thoughts on today’s economic battles.
Contributing RP Jason Atkinson also makes his return, in two guises: You will hear his musings on one of his favorite avocations — competitive cycling — and watch an old video of a speech he delivered on the Oregon State Senate floor, dressed up as a much more famous fellow Republican.
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Apr 21, 2011 at 3:00 PM ET
Jimmie Johnson
In this week’s NASCAR Power Rankings Jimmie Johnson takes the top spot away from Carl Edwards after winning the Sprint Cup race at Talladega this weekend. [ESPN]
Ed Hinton writes that if you didn’t like the Talladega race this weekend, then NASCAR just isn’t for you. [ESPN]
Amazingly, Junior is not the most mentioned name during race telecasts. Any guess on who is? [Yahoo! Sports]
Ferrarri is worth a lot of money. Have you ever wondered how much? The Italian auto-maker was recently valued at around $7.3 billion. [AutoBlog]
Lastly, check out the British stunt driver that completes a 360° loop in a Fiat 500. [AutoBlog]
How does a liberal doctor, beekeeper and naturalist become the force behind an anti-immigration movement that includes members who refer to the President of the United States as “the undocumented worker” in the White House? A fascinating glimpse into the world of anti-immigrant groups and “the most influential unknown man in America.” [New York Times]
And as with most things in life, the topic of immigration is not black and white—not even in immigrant communities. [Pew Hispanic Center]
Last week, The RP reported on the difficulty of quantifying the number of people that cross the U.S.-Mexico border each year. One thing is for sure: the number of arrests by border patrol agents have dropped by two-thirds over the last decade. The result? An epidemic of boredom among officers. [Los Angeles Times]
Boycott or engagement? Arizona’s anti-immigration legislation has left a dearth of live concerts available to music loving Arizonans—and plenty of critics on both sides. [Salon]
On a lighter note (and sticking with music), The RP has been looking for an opportunity to post this for a while. A band at the height of their powers, prowess and fame. Ahh, the 70s. [Immigrant Song]
Below is a picture of The RP with his gorgeous posse (Mrs. RP and the RP-ettes). For a hint about the location, take a careful look at what is protruding in the back center of the photo.
The first person to guess the correct location in the comments section below this piece wins. (Close friends and family are disqualified — but they already have a signed copy of the book anyway.)
By Grant Smith, RP Staff, on Thu Apr 21, 2011 at 10:00 AM ET
The Politics of Fame
Be sure to stop at McDonald’s before you go. That’s right, the Queen is only serving canapes at the royal wedding. [New York Times]
Who needs Hillary or Kissinger as diplomats, when you have Pauly D, Snooki and the Situation? Season 4 of Jersey Shore goes international. America’s finest hour of diplomacy is at hand. [TMZ]
Because his first show wasn’t funny enough as it was, Glenn Beck now wants to make his own version of the Daily Show. [LA Times]
And then there was one: Charlie Sheen temporarily loses one of his goddesses. Insert your best “Winning!” joke here. [TMZ]
By Steven Schulman, on Thu Apr 21, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET
I have the greatest job in the world — or so I am told nearly every week or so, typically by a law student, but sometimes by colleagues and adversaries. No, I am not the shortstop for the Boston Red Sox (Jed Lowrie is doing just fine, thank you very much).
I am a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, an international law firm with more than 800 attorneys around the world. And not just *any* partner, but the Pro Bono Partner, leading a firm-wide practice group in which more than 550 of my colleagues work every year, collectively devoting nearly 60,000 hours annually to a wide variety of indigent clients and public interest causes. I work very hard, but I rarely bill an hour.
How did I get this gig? Well, like many such stories, this one starts with a large Nigerian coming to my office one spring afternoon.
On that day more than 13 years ago, I was a litigation associate at an even larger international law firm, Latham & Watkins. My practice consisted primarily of advising large corporations facing all manner of antitrust issues, from mergers and acquisitions being challenged by the Department of Justice to competitors suing over allegedly wrongful conduct. To put it bluntly, my practice was as relevant to a Nigerian man as the Washington Nationals are to the National League pennant race.
Placing Nigeria on a map...
But there he was, because I had raised my hand at a litigation group lunch when someone asked for help in this Nigerian’s immigration court case. Once we settled into a conference room, Tolu introduced himself and then his quite large family — both physically and numerically. My charge: get them asylum. Second place: deportation back to Nigeria, likely to return to the prison where he had been detained and tortured for his pro-democracy activism. I had never set foot in an immigration court, not could I confidently place Nigeria on a map. But I did have enough legal training to figure it all out, and enough pressure, given the stakes, to motivate me to work as hard as I would for any paying client.
Obviously, we won, or else I would still be worrying about how to get approval for the merger of the largest and second-largest widget makers in the North American market.
Winning Tolu’s case set me on an unusual path, one that eventually led me to focus on pro bono practice half-time (at Latham) and then full-time (when I joined Akin Gump in 2006).
It consequently led Jonathan to place on me the moniker of “recovering antitrust lawyer.” I resisted this label at first – after all, I did not surrender my law firm credentials or lifestyle, and count among my partners some fine antitrust lawyers. I am still very much part of the law firm world. Then again, the recovering politicians who contribute to this site are in similar positions – at once quite engaged in politics, even if no
longer serving in office.
Tolu and family
Like these RPs, I don’t reject my former practice. Rather, I embrace the law firm model and ethos, but work to improve our firm by pushing it to meet the lofty ideals of our profession. Representing Tolu, and subsequently other refugees from all over the world, inspired me not just to do this work myself, but to enlist others to use theirtalents to serve the less fortunate among us. I continue to be inspired by my colleagues, who selflessly give their time to advise the KIPP charter schools or fight for Social Security benefits for disabled clients.
My fellow Akin Gump attorneys show every day that the billable hour isn’t the only law firm value, as much as the profession has been driven to act more like a bottom-line business.
——
And now a tribute from another refugee advocate:
By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Apr 20, 2011 at 5:00 PM ET
Another day, another half-dozen posts at The Recovering Politician…
Tomorrow, we will introduce a new Friend of the RP. Our younger readers will want to pay close attention to this piece: He’s the only person I know who made partner at a huge, international law firm without billing an hour. And he still isn’t billing clients.
We’ll also have another edition of that ultra-popular game show, Where in the World is the RP? Pay close attention to the Web site (That means click in every five minutes or so), because you will never know when the piece will be posted, and only the first person who guesses the location of the picture wins a free, autographed copy of The RP’s book, The Compassionate Community: Ten Values to Unite America.
And of course, since tomorrow is Thirsty Thursday, all beers sold at this site will be half-priced. Except Miller Genuine Draft, as the RP gets residuals.
By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Apr 20, 2011 at 12:30 PM ET
NATO’s operations in Libya have created a very odd moment in international affairs. The decision to commit US and NATO forces to help the embattled rebels by imposing a no fly zone happened so fast there was barely any time for an actual debate. The momentum for swift action, however, has dissipated now that the decision has been made, leaving us with a stalemate on the ground and with lingering concerns that, almost in a fit of insensibility, the US and its allies have begun an adventure without any clear idea of how or when it will end.
The political contortions surrounding the decision to act will keep historians and political scientists busy for years. It offered, for example, the confusing spectacle of the Secretary of Defense going into detail about what a bad idea a no fly zone was only a few days before the decision to go ahead. The President made the decision while traveling in Latin America, and only spoke to the American people in detail several days after the air war began. The political class was similarly confused.
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Click on the chart above to see how Alex Pareene of Salon wonderfully skewered the GOP position.
Only relatively marginalized groups on Right and Left offered clear objections—Glenn Beck seeing in the Arab Spring a global conspiracy of liberals and Islamists to establish a Caliphate; Dennis Kucinich wanting to impeach the President for going to war—but the political establishment acquiesced quickly to the arguments for action. Congressional Democrats, many of whom had been vocal critics of military actions elsewhere, closed ranks around the President. Congressional Republicans were caught flat-footed, and after a period of confusion settled on a strategy of criticizing the manner in which the decision was made rather than the decision itself.
The international reactions have been no less confused. Europeans, concerned about the unrest in a country so close to their shores and which provided so much of Europe’s oil, were among the first calling for action, seconded (incongruously enough) by the Arab League. Calls for a no fly zone grew as it appeared that TheBrotherLeaderWhoseNameWesternMedia-HasNotBeenAbleToTransliterateEffectivelySince1969 was preparing to massacre the rebels in the besieged towns and cities of Eastern Libya. With President Obama arguing that the US could not go it alone, and our most important European allies expressing a willingness to shoulder a large share of the burden, the UN Security Council supported the idea, and voila! A triumph of multilateralism.
Yes, the Security Council managed to avoid a Russian or Chinese veto, but the best those two international free riders could offer was to abstain. Neither China nor Russia has made any constructive contribution to settling the problems, and no one expects them to either, which is incongruous but habitual for two states who enjoy complaining about American unilateralism. To make matters worse, the Germans, in the person of Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who had spoken so loudly in the run-up to the vote about the need to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe, joined China and Russia in the abstention. Westerwelle and his boss, Chancellor Angel Merkel, had their eyes on upcoming state elections and decided not to rile the German public by committing the Germans to military action—thus choosing to be preemptively irresponsible rather than provide ammunition for their even more internationally irresponsible domestic rivals. Westerwelle then doubled down on the pusillanimity by announcing that the German abstention did not mean the Germans would not support allied actions in general, as if fecklessness and opportunism are somehow more appealing when one makes no effort to hide them. In the end, the German government was rightfully pummeled from all sides, continues to earn the scorn of media critics (such as Roger Cohen in the NY Times), has alienated its allies, and lost the big state election in Baden-Württemberg anyway.
France's Sarkozy
Meanwhile, France, with Britain close behind, has taken a leading role in the Libya action (and, partially in response to critics who said the West did not care about non-oil-producing lands, Ivory Coast as well). Recent French actions would overturn all the American canards about French weakness and cowardice so popular in the debate over Iraq, if the people who traffic in such canards actually allowed themselves to be swayed by actual facts. One should of course not over-praise French willingness to act, since it reflects domestic politics as much as the German decision. President Nicolas Sarkozy has calculated that these actions will help burnish his image as a leader as he attempts to rev up his re-election campaign. Whether it will do that remains to be seen. In this case, however, the French government has both made a clear decision and has backed it up with actions.
Read the rest of… Ronald J. Granieri: Form, Function & Fantasy in Foreign Policy
