Cheers! Here's to 'De-Escalation'

WASHINGTON (AP) — The chief White House spokesman says a

Thursday meeting among the president, a Harvard University

scholar and the policeman who arrested him will be "about

having a beer and de-escalation."

Robert Gibbs says the session, weather permitting, is planned

for a picnic table outside the Oval Office. According to

Gibbs, "The president wants to continue to take down the

temperature a bit."

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., who is black, was

arrested last week by Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge,

Mass., police department, who is white, after an

investigation into a suspected burglary found no burglars but

escalated into a heated exchange between the men at Gates'

home.

Will the beer bromance at the White House solve anything?