The Department of Justice announced this week that it will no longer attempt to defend the Defense of Marriage Act from federal lawsuits, saying, in part
[T]he President has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny. The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional. Given that conclusion, the President has instructed the Department not to defend the statute in such cases.
This is a remarkable development on two levels.
The first is the purely constitutional analysis. This is by no means the first time that an administration has refused to defend a law.* The majority of those situations fit into one of two categories. The larger group includes cases where a Supreme Court decision subsequent to the filing of the suit has rendered a potential defense null and void. A second, smaller class consists of circumstances in which the case in question infringes upon Article II powers themselves. In the latter, the DOJ is essentially refusing to argue against its own interests (legal, constitutional interests, not specifically ideological interests).
Don’t let the subtitle fool you – this ‘cast has nothing whatsoever to do with either the 1985 Jeff Bridges / James Woods / Alex Karras “thriller,” or the Oscar-winning Phil Collins song of the same name. Enjoy.
and that scratching-record moment where John Travolta grabs Marlon Brando’s injured leg, and, with penetrating concentration, uses his mind-power to heal Brando’s injury.
has been ruffling the feathers of our Chinese 
will Sterling Archer’s own action / intrigue (and Burt Reynolds references) allow upstart Archer to take the crown from venerable and little-watched NBC fare?
assigned to me during my early academic career. As was the case with most of that group, I ended up merely skimming enough to do well on the test or write the paper, as needed. I’m not proud of that fact, but such was life when I was in my early-to-mid-teens.
attention to the incomparable Justin Drew Bieber. I referred to Lady Gaga as a “near-prodigy” last week. There’s no qualifier necessary for Bieber. His is a gift in which we all share. Since his discovery as a thirteen-year-old, Justin Bieber has quickly emerged as Canada’s greatest entertainer since 
SitCombat: 2/24/11
Yesterday was quite a day around these parts.* I can think of no better way to follow up an academic-style commentary
about the Obama Administration’s decision to cease defending DOMA than with an analysis of the relative merits of three Thursday night sitcoms.
I’ve been accused of underrating the Office two weeks in a row. Let’s see if my detractors will continue to have fodder for their misguided attacks.
Here’s what the sitcom landscape looked like on February 24, 2011:
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