The New Face of American Power

What we can really learn from Gatesgate:

...America is being led, to a striking extent, by a new elite, a cohort of the best and the brightest whose advancement was formed, at least in part, by affirmative action policies. ...And yet the consequences of that change remain unresolved.

..Even those who now occupy niches at the top of society, regard their status as complicated, ambiguous and vulnerable.

--from Helene Cooper at the Times

Beer-Fueled Diplomacy

For more than a week a debate on racial profiling has raged in American press quarters. Did police mistreat Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the esteemed Harvard professor, because he's black? Clearly, it's unclear.

And so, in a move promoting both racial harmony and drinking, President Obama has invited his pal Gates and the arresting officer to the White House to share in a cold one and discuss.

It started out as a casual suggestion: three guys working out their differences over a beer. But President Obama's offer to play host to the cop and the professor entangled in a debate over racial profiling now carries the imprimatur of high-level diplomacy.

--via LATimes, on the so-named "Beer Summit"