+1 for this, and implementing user_admin_role() (etc?) using the new functions.
I was thinking we could go one of two ways on this. Either a series
of functions like:
user_role_create() // or user_role_insert or user_role_add
user_role_read() // or user_role_get
user_role_update() // or user_role_save
user_role_delete()
user_role_list() // retrieve a list of all user roles as an array of
objects or whatever