So Right And Yet So Wrong

This tribute to the fallen pitchman:


Appropriate, a nice tribute, and really friggin' funny, all at the same time.

Not In The Job Description

There seems to be a minor error in logic rotating around the progressive blogs these days.

First comes a diatribe from The McEwan:

Instead, the brief justified the law, using the same tired old chestnuts we came to expect from Obama's predecessor, including the despicable comparison of states' right to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages with their right to refuse to recognize incestuous marriages and unions that would be considered statutory rape under state law, as well as the pathetic contention that a union between one man and one woman is "the traditional, and universally recognized, version of marriage." Blah blah yawn.

And second from The Drum:

[Copy/paste from three articles regarding the Obama Administration's legal briefs]

Hope and change, baby, hope and change.

Now let us enter back to our high school Civics classes and state the division of powers within the Federal Government. The Judiciary Branch judges based upon the laws. The Legislative Branch passes legislation which become laws. The Executive Branch executes the laws. Remember those concepts?

Over the last 8 years, we have had an activist Executive, more than willing to enact his own legislation from the Resolute Desk. Whether by the use of signing statements that ran contrary to the legislation as passed by Congress, or by the issuance of permanent Executive Orders, the second Bush Administration ran roughshod over the Constitutional division of powers and performed as a second source of national law. And we of the blogosphere are used to this style of performance, with the Oval Office running roughshod over established law whenever it became inconvenient to the stated goals of the Administration.

Yet not the Obama Administration. They are recognizing that their duty to the country as a whole is to follow the laws of the country as a whole, whether they may agree with them or not. That is the task of the Executive Branch: to execute the laws as they exist. Not to ignore laws they find inconvenient, or disregard laws they campaigned against, or force new laws to be made outside of the division of powers; their task is to perform under the laws of these United States.

And to see an Oval Office that holds to the laws of this nation?

That is hope and change I can believe in.