Home
D&D
Music
Banner Archive

Marvel Comics Timeline
Godzilla Timeline


RSS

   

« Shorter Roger Cohen | Main | Everybody wins, i guess »

Glenn Greenwald has a question

Link:

For two years now, the Obama DOJ has been defending the constitutionality of DOMA in federal courts around the country. In response to objections from gay groups, Obama officials -- and their supporters -- insisted that the President had no choice, that it's the duty of the Justice Department to defend the constitutionality of all laws enacted by Congress, and that it's dangerous for the President to pick and choose which laws to defend or not defend. That's actually a reasonable position; there is a genuine danger in having the President selectively defend Congressional statutes (although many past administrations have refused to defend particular laws where they believed they could not in good faith do so). Although I believe it is appropriate in rare cases for the DOJ to refuse to defend a statute or even affirmatively argue for its unconstitutionality (provided it continues to enforce the law until it's repealed or struck down), there is a valid concern on the part of those who argue -- as Obama supporters did for the last two years -- that it's never appropriate for the DOJ to refrain from defending a statute or, at least, that it would be wrong to do so in the DOMA case.

But for those loyal Obama supporters who spent two years defending the administration's DOMA position on this ground: if they have even a minimal amount of intellectual honestly, shouldn't they now criticize the President's reversal, this new refusal to defend DOMA? If they really believed what they were saying for the last two years -- that a President is required to defend the constitutionality of all statutes -- then shouldn't they be vocally condemning Obama now for doing exactly that which they insisted he has no power to do?

By fnord12 | February 24, 2011, 11:52 AM | Liberal Outrage