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Taking organic farming to the next level, some small producers and ditching their tractors and harnessing their oxen. [nytimes.com] Not all non-native species wreak havoc on an ecosystem, sometimes they can restore it. [yahoo.com] Tilapia consumption has drastically increased in the US, but the health and environmental drawbacks may make you think twice about eating it. [nytimes.com] The greenest places in America are actually the most urban places. [time.com] Today’s addition of Where in the World is the RP takes us to RP nirvana. Back during his tour of duty in the nation’s capital, the RP and his BFF, the late great Alex Haught, used to hang out during cherry blossom season at the Jefferson Memorial. So the RP communes with cherry blossom trees whenever possible. This past weekend, the RP attended a Japanese-themed cherry blossom festival far from his home in Kentucky. He made some new friends as well. Guess the precise location of this particular cherry blossom festival, and win an autographed copy of the RP’s The Compassionate Community: Ten Values to Unite America. (Family and close friends of the RP are strictly disqualified). Hint: It ain’t Tokyo:
I went to bed early Sunday night, and thus did not hear the big news about the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden until this morning when I received an email from the RP himself asking me if I wanted to write a response. After receiving the note, I turned on my radio (which is of course tuned to NPR, because I am a College Professor) and heard the details. My initial reaction was surprise, for two reasons: I was surprised that the search for bin Laden was still ongoing, and I was surprised by how ambivalent the news made me feel. Historians have a bad and well-earned reputation for being killjoys, so I am sure that few will be surprised by my ambivalence, but I hope my thoughts on the subject can be a useful spur to further debate. Certainly, the elimination of a terrorist mastermind and mass murderer with thousands of deaths on his conscience cannot be anything but a good thing, and I am happy to think that some of the families of bin Laden’s victims can enjoy the thought that the man responsible for such crimes as 9/11 has been brought to justice. I have to admit discomfort with the idea that the team of SEALs went in with explicit orders to kill rather than capture bin Laden for trial. At the same time I rather doubt that he would have been willing to be taken alive, and am aware of the enormous problems that a trial would have posed, so I do not think it makes much sense to cavil at that subject. The real source of my ambivalence is the feeling that no one really knows what this will mean in the long run. The US has scored a major symbolic victory, but it does not mean the end of the conflict in which the US and its allies are presently engaged. Furthermore, the nature of that struggle demands that we not fall prey to complacency after one success, however satisfying. Read the rest of… The world is safer and more free with the news that Osama Bin Laden is dead. Al Qaeda is demoralized, and its marginalization is on display in a vivid manner for young men and women in the Arab world trying to decide if modernity or jihad is the best principle to organize their ambitions. I am not as quick to compare the moment with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, or the collapse of the Soviet Union, as some commentators have rushed to do. It elevates Bin Laden to compare his virtual, quasi-state of malcontents and jihadists to Soviet totalitarianism at its peak. At the same time, it underestimates the reach and the viral quality of radical fundamentalism to assume that Bin Laden’s demise is the equivalent of military divisions dissolving or nuclear codes being disarmed. The best way to quantify the event, I believe, is not analogy but a nod to American power wisely and assertively deployed over two administrations and ten years. Both the Bush and Obama Administration deserve tribute for a patient dismantling of Al Qaeda over that period of time: it has been appropriately lethal and effective and has required the stretching of pre 9/11 sensibilities. At times, it has veered off course–the embrace of torture as a tactic comes to mind–but not many Americans believed on the night of 9/11 that another decade would pass without a terror attack on American soil. I have no illusion that the exhilaration in America today has permanent political significance. Our attention span is so fleeting. It also seems to me mildly profane to turn the moment into partisan chortling over how Obama accomplished what Bush did not. But I liked seeing the exultation on television in the last 12 hours–and I loved the fact that is multi-ethnic, multi-generational, and that reaction is not splintered along the dividing lines that are all over the political landscape. I admire both Obama’s unadorned reference to “justice” last night–that is exactly how my faith describes the rooting out of evil– and George W. Bush’s September 2001 shouts above the rubble at Ground Zero that “the people who destroyed these buildings are about to hear all of us.” After a decade of evasion, Osama Bin Laden finally heard us in the frenzy of BlackHawks descending and our bullets finding their mark. The echoes of that sound are just what a dispirited nation needed to hear. Two quick thoughts/observations on the Bin Laden aftermath: First, it is quite a sight to be met upon arrival at a subway station in Manhattan by police officers carrying automatic weapons in plain view. It lessens the amount of caffeine you need to get the day started. In fact, I can’t even think of a movie that assembled such a group. Just one of these guys equals Rambo. Imagine 15 of them at once…wild stuff. Today, we introduce our newest contributing recovering politician, Andrew Romanoff, through the magic of video Skype. Andrew served as Speaker of the House for the Colorado state House of Representatives until he was term-limited in 2010. That year, he bucked the state and national Democratic establishment by challenging his party’s U.S. Senator, Michael Bennet, who had been appointed to that office by the Democratic governor and supported by President Obama. Despite this challenge — and with an assist from President Clinton who endorsed him — Andrew almost pulled the upset of the election cycle. Now a Senior Advisor for International Development Enterprises, Andrew shares with The RP his thoughts about his race, term limits, and global conflict and development: I’m traveling this week, went to sleep early, and awoke to a half dozen texts from my teenage daughters. Uh oh. When I read the joy and excitement in their messages, I remembered that their first politicial memory – the first real-world memory for all young Americans of their generation – was 9/11. This is America’s first post-partisan generation; they care much more about their country and their communities than partisan labels. When I turned on the TV this morning, I saw thousands upon thousands of young people, singing and dancing in the streets of Times Square, Ohio State’s campus, DC’s Pennsylvania Avenue, etc., etc. So today is not a Democratic moment, or a Republican moment. It is an American moment. It is events like these that encouraged me to start this web site. It is my sincere hope that the unity we see today can be replicated and extended beyond this brief period of celebration. We’ll have more to say on justice and Bin Laden. But right now, let’s bask in the joy of our kids and grandkids. As we determine to fix this broken, hyper partisan political system, remember: It is all about them. In the Pacific Northwest, buildings are starting to become “net-zero water”. This involves recycling rainwater and “grey water” as well as composting waste. [yahoo.com] For all the ladies out there, instead of buying clothes at the mall, make your next wardrobe from recyclables. [cnn.com] Those flowers that you plant in your garden may not be exactly what you think they are. Lowe’s and Home Depot are in an “arms race” for the best plants. [wsj.com] Birds that act as “tape-recorders” allow us to examine changes in lifestyle and habitat. [npr. org] Good news for the California Condor. [cnn.com] The Politics of the Planet Once again, nature has a better solution than resorting to man-made chemicals. [NPR] It is the one year anniversary of the BP Oil Spill. A reminder of what happened through pictures of the spill and the aftermath. [Yahoo News] Why cities are “greener” than you may think, and how our tax law discourages city living. [Freakanomics] A healthful and environmentally friendly meal may be closer than you think. [NPR]
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  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. —— |
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