David Limbaugh on the Obama administration’s decision to effectively abandon the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA):
During his presidential campaign, Obama stated that he did not support same-sex marriage but that he did believe that DOMA should be repealed. He gave no hint that he would take it upon himself to issue a presidential edict, without a congressional bill placed before him, forbidding the executive branch from enforcing the law. But that is precisely what he did this week.
Attorney General Eric Holder announced that President Obama had concluded that the administration would no longer defend Section 3 of DOMA. Holder acknowledged that the Justice Department had previously defended DOMA in court under a “rational basis standard.” (It’s interesting they chose Section 3, because many legal scholars believe Section 2 is more vulnerable to a constitutional challenge.) But he said Obama now believes that “a more heightened standard of scrutiny” should be required for laws involving same-sex marriage — the same standard that applies to “laws targeting minority groups with a history of discrimination.”
To understand the magnitude of Obama’s action, we must again consider the above-cited fact that both chambers of Congress passed DOMA by overwhelming majorities reflecting the will of the people that marriage be defined, for legal and policy purposes, as it always had been. Also, no federal appellate court has ruled the statute unconstitutional.
As he has in so many other areas (EPA, the offshore drilling ban, IMF), Obama has usurped the authority of the other two coequal branches of government to make himself, in effect, not just chief executive but super-legislator and a supreme judicial authority.
To hell with the three branches of government and the system of checks and balances preventing one branch from usurping power.
We have Obama. King Obama. He is The Won.
And he reigns.
