re: #14 Charles

This is a sick, unconstitutional law that has no business existing, and the Justice Department made the decision, not Obama.

Whether it’s unconstitutional is for the courts to say. Your own wording for the post said that Obama had made the call.

President Barack Obama has concluded that the administration can no longer defend the federal law …

I take it that opinion here is unanimous, save one, that when an administration concludes that it doesn’t like a law, and when that law is under legal challenge, the law can be taken off the books by the simple expedient of forfeiting the case.

That, moreover, any defense, not of that law, but of the mechanisms by which we decide on laws, is illegitimate. That today’s expedient device will never be, could never be, applied again, by some other president with his own agenda.

You-all are missing the wider implications. There are consequences to overturning the whole notion of a government of laws not men so as to get rid of one bad law. This law could have been rescinded by Congress. It could have been held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The device now used will be used again. It expands the powers of the presidency.