By Walter Shapiro

In foreign affairs—unlike domestic policy—a president can reinvent himself in the middle of his time in office without worrying about congressional majorities. Mistaken paths can be abandoned and new approaches tried, often without public acknowledgement that anything has changed. George W. Bush did this in his second term as he moved away from the bristling go-it-alone militarism of Dick Cheney towards a more traditional approached personified by Condi Rice.

Now, Barack Obama has hit the reset button with the most far-reaching national security address of his presidency. In an hour at the National Defense University on a spring afternoon, Obama backed away from the excesses of his death-from-air drone policy, renewed his efforts to depopulate Guantanamo and tried to reassure the press that he is not attempting to criminalize investigative journalism.

Embedded in the speech was the larger message: The war on terror, launched in the panicked

Boy Scouts of America headquarters in Irving, Texas. (Jason Sickles/Yahoo News)

[Updated at 5:30 p.m. CT]

DALLAS – The Boy Scouts of America, one of the country’s largest and oldest youth organizations, decided Thursday to break 103 years of tradition by allowing openly gay members into its ranks.

The controversial move was approved by more than 60 percent of the approximate 1,400 votes cast by the BSA’s national council. According to the new resolution, beginning Jan. 1, 2014, "no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.”

“The resolution also reinforces that Scouting is a youth program, and any sexual conduct, whether heterosexual or homosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting,” the BSA stated in a press release.

Lifting the organization’s ban on gay adult volunteer leaders and paid staff was not