Blog Layout

The demise of Blogrolling has forced El Jefe into the somewhat undesired adoption of a new template. Among other things, the switch has disrupted paragraphing and formatting in old posts.

Still experimenting with it, so patience is respectfully requested and appreciated.

Obama Impeachment? Naaah.

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, and would-be candidate for President, has created a chattering-class kerfluffle: accusing President Obama of sparking a "constitutional crisis" by refusing to support the Defense of Marriage Act (110 Stat. 2419, 1 U.S.C. § 7, 28 U.S.C. § 1738C) ("DOMA")  in court against various legal challenges questioning its constitutionality.

The pots are well and truly stirring now. The US News and World Report blog, appears to believe that the Justice Department will no longer enforce the DOMA. I don't believe enforcement of the Act is at issue -- any federal official who knowingly declined to enforce or obey a Federal statute, without some cover by a court decision, would be putting himself in legal jeopardy. What the President has done is to tell the Attorney General not to defend the Act before the courts. The courts will decide whether the law is constitutional, or not.

Mr. Gingrich is astonishingly bright. He is a superb speaker (a scarce talent indeed on the Republican side of our politics) a brilliant writer, a sometimes interesting novelist (check out his and William S. Forstchen's Civil War alternative history series) and in his day, quite a political fixer. Mr. Gingrich, however, wants more -- he wants to be President of the United States; and (quite aside from the curse of having the moniker "Newt") Mr. Gingrich's essential problem is that the road to glory cannot be followed with too much baggage. Mr. Gingrich's pronouncement on DOMA today should be viewed in light of his need to curry favor with the evangelical wing of the Republican Party.

Now I'm not by any means a supporter of President Obama. But, even with considerable anti-Obama bias, it should be obvious that the President is not going to be impeached for a matter which is well within his, and within his Attorney General's, discretion. The Republican Party is not going to commit political suicide -- there's no need for that -- everything is breaking in a Republican way already. Skeptics of this view might ask themselves why Obama took this step, now, with DOMA, and why he announced such an interesting appointment today. We are well into the 2012 election cycle now, and the gay constituency and their large political contributions should be well and truly in the President's corner already.

Mr. Gingrich surely knows all these things. Unfortunately, what he doesn't seem to know is that he is not going to be President in this lifetime.