DOMA doppelgänger haunts GOP

The Obama White House no longer thinks the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is constitutional and has ordered the Justice Dept. to stop defending the law in court challenges. Naturally, the legal eagles on the right (mostly anti-gay pundits without "esquire" after their names) are unhappy. Welcome to another round of politically-motivated argument for (mostly) argument sake. Per the Washington Monthly, some conservatives charge that too-clever-by-half Obama is doing "an end-run around democracy." Too much power is being ceded to the Executive Branch, they fret. Others apocalyptically predict DOMA will doom Obama's entire presidency. But as the Washington Post calmly notes, "the Obama administration will cease defending the law in court; it won't cease enforcing it. It has publicly informed Congress of its decision, rather than writing a secret memo empowering the executive branch to pretend certain laws don't exist." Plus, the administration's legal maneuver is "hardly unprecedented," the Post says. That's good enough for me.