If you are interested in hearing a dramatic reading of our transcript from the Beer Summit starring the voice talents of Christopher Hayes, Amanda Carpenter, Ana Marie Cox, and Ezra Klein, you can listen in at the Air America website. Ana does her "street" voice!

Henry Louis Gates' neighbors are trying to start a conversation of their own, apparently.

Welcome to week three of the Henry Louis Gates arrest story! Apparently we're at the stage where we can laugh about it now, unless we are National Arbiter of Morals Sally Quinn-herself a victim of discrimination from a black police officer-who thinks the professor is a dishonorable man. This has seemed like a very quick summer, but, man, it has NOT BEEN QUICK ENOUGH.

It only looks like an Onion headline. READ MORE

Late this afternoon, President Obama finally sat down over beers with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge police sergeant James Crowley. The LA Times notes that "a small group of photographers and reporters was permitted to witness the meeting for about 30 seconds and from about 50 feet away — transmitting to the world a snapshot of Obama, in shirt sleeves, seated at an oval table with the now-famous pair. Gates and Crowley appeared to talk seriously, and at one point Obama gave a hearty laugh. Joining the three was Vice President Joe Biden, also in shirt sleeves." While the meeting was closed to the press, we've obtained a transcript. READ MORE

Our national conversation on beer will hopefully reach its conclusion this evening at 6 P.M., when President Obama, Henry Louis Gates, and Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley gather together in the White House and crack the top on an ice-cold Bud Light. The obvious political pandering in the selection of beverage ("Democratic political consultant Chris Lehane noted Bud Light traces its roots to Missouri, one of the nation's hardest fought electoral battlegrounds in recent years") has caused some controversy, in that Bud Light is neither technically American (Anheuser-Busch was acquired by Belgian-Brazilan consortium InBev last year) nor technically beer (Bud Light is a combination of frog urine and carbonation), but given that the whole event will not technically be any kind of real conversation about race, it seems oddly appropriate.

Holy genealogy! It turns out that Skip Gates and the Cambridge cop who nabbed him for being dusky in his own domicile are related! Gates and Sgt. James Crowley are both descendants of fourth century Irish warlord Niall of the Nine Hostages, who was so named because he would niall anything that moved. (Haha, get it?) The article notes that "many famous African-Americans [have] Irish heritage, including President Barack Obama and award-winning author Alice Walker." Also, many unfamous African-Americans have Irish heritage, because back in the slavery era there was a whole lot of raping going on. Anyway, this will surely be a great ice-breaker at the kegger President Obama is hosting tomorrow night. It will also provide further fuel for your racist uncle who has always said that the Irish "are just as bad as the blacks."

It is truly a testament to this nation's inability to focus on anything lacking a celebrity component that the quotidian story of a black man arrested for being surly in his own home continues to get major coverage well over a week after the initial event. As the President prepares to host Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge police officer who collared him at a White House summit meeting, the press is asking the important question: What beer is he going to serve? READ MORE

The Cambridge Police Department has released audio of the 911 call that lead to Henry Louis Gates' arrest and portions of the conversation between the investigating officer and dispatch. What do we learn? Well, according to one commenter at the Boston Globe, "These tapes are his Achilles heel, it is a great day and will show that people such as him, Jackson, and Sharpton are more and more wrong every day." The rest of you may be a little less certain. (Meanwhile, in case you missed it, please read this Stanley Fish piece from Friday. The last two paragraphs are pretty great.)