AP source: Gates and Crowley going to White House (Thursday)

Source: Associated Press

AP source: Gates and Crowley going to White House
By CHARLES BABINGTON Associated Press Writer


Jul 27th, 2009 | WASHINGTON -- The professor, the policeman and the president are ready to share a beer -- and maybe a few thoughts about race and law enforcement in America.

The gathering set for Thursday evening may help President Barack Obama write a sudsy but happy ending to an arrest that triggered a fierce debate over race relations and briefly knocked him off his stride.

An administration official said Monday that Obama is hosting the two main characters in the unlikely Boston-area drama that dominated several news cycles last week: Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Mass., police department. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement was not yet public.

Crowley, who is white, arrested Gates, who is black, after an investigation into a suspected burglary found no burglars but escalated into a heated exchange between the men at Gates' home. When Obama said last Wednesday that the police had "acted stupidly," the national debate over racial profiling become so fierce that the president had to intercede again on Friday to get the public's attention back to his health care agenda.

Read more: http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/2009/07/27/D99N62L00_us_obama_harvard_scholar_beer/

this meeting seems just as important as the health care reform - if not more so.

I hope Robert Gibbs's staff is taking notes of who is asking these inane questions at the press conferences.