By Laura Blumenfeld

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 6, 2009

 NEVADA COUNTY, CALIF. -- He wears no coat though it's freezing, shines no light though it's near midnight, carries no shotgun though he's tramping on the pine-needled tracks of black bears.

He wants to be lost in these woods.

"Come on, you bums," Neel Kashkari calls to his dogs, two giant Newfoundlands. "Boys, let's go."

He is walking through the smoke of a controlled burn in the Sierra Nevadas. He is talking about the people and the life he left behind in Washington. Former Treasury Department official Neel Kashkari helped create the TARP program, and then he escaped from Washington.
» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

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Obama: 'Peace requires responsibility'

(CNN) -- President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday with much discussion of war and the limits of nonviolence.

But he also praised the peacemakers of the past and said the world can and should still strive for peace.

The following is a transcript of Obama's acceptance speech:

Your majesties, your royal highnesses, distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, citizens of America and citizens of the world:

I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility. It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations -- that for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.

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