re: #88 lostlakehiker

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

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 This law could have been rescinded by Congress.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.

Doesn’t the government have a right to not defend the laws they don’t like?

The Governor of California for example declared his state wouldn’t be defending Prop 8…

Why is it okay on the state level but not the national one?