Incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) may well be a racist, but it's time to put this controversy into perspective before Republicans wash their hands of him and end up looking tough on race. With Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.), the party's minority whip, calling for new leadership, President Bush rebuking Lott publicly and conservative media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal asking for his resignation, you have to wonder if Republicans are trying to use Lott as a scapegoat to distract the public from their own sorry record on civil rights. You also have to wonder whether the Democrats will have the courage to turn a piece of political theater into a serious discussion of race and equality.

Just when it was looking as if the Bush administration would stamp its economic model on the entire Western Hemisphere, a credible challenge has emerged. South America's largest and most self-reliant economy is very likely to elect a popular moderate leftist. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the Workers Party in Brazil has campaigned vigorously against President George W. Bush's proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). First imagined by Ronald Reagan, it would essentially extend the North American Free Trade Agreement from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego. With a crucial negotiating session co-chaired by the United States and Brazil in Quito, Ecuador, set for just after Brazil's Oct.