<div id="subtitle">By fate or by own hand, peripheral characters caught up in Gates racially tinged drama</div><div><p>They weren't invited to the Rose Garden to hoist beers with President Barack Obama, yet their lives have been turned upside-down by the encounter between a black Harvard scholar and ...

<div><p>Just as Congress makes progress on health care legislation, President Barack Obama will have to set aside his top legislative priority to revisit the racially charged issue that stole the spotlight from his health care push last week — the arrest of his Harvard professor friend.</p><p>Obama, Cambridge, Mass ...