>It would be suicide to the Macbook Air line if they released another powerful 13" laptop that gave the Air no competitive advantage than simply it's weight.
Isn't that basically the case already? To go from the base 13" MBP to the base Air, you're getting a Core 2 that's .54GHz slower, a worse graphics card, half the battery life, only 2 GB RAM, no optical drive, and only 1 USB port, all for $300 more. All you're getting in return for all of that is the fact that it's super-thin and super-light.