This is a Puzzlement

Here are thoughts on the Don't Ask, Don't Tell court ruling and appeal thereof.♠

From a Blog at Columbia Law School we have additional comments.

From the footnotes of the Government's appeal we have this:

As the President has stated previously, the Administration does not support the DADT statute as a matter of policy and strongly supports its repeal.  However, the Department of Justice has long followed the practice of defending federal statutes as long as reasonable arguments can be made in support of their constitutionality, even if the Administration disagrees with a particular statute as a policy matter, as it does here.

I like the idea that the Executive, under the Take Care Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Art. II, Sec. 3, Clause 4 ) defends the laws passed by Congress.  It is a nice and tidy way of doing things.  But, there is precedent for not doing so, as the first linked Blogger, above, shows.

I do understand the Senate wishing to wait for the report from the Secretary of Defense, due out on 1 December.  I hope that with the report in hand they will move quickly to make this go away, and in so doing will make the appropriate adjustments to the UCMJ.  I am not into make-work projects for lawyers and judges based upon Congress not getting the paperwork straight.

Both links are via Instapundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Note that the first link has a quote from a local; former Gov Jane Swift's running mate, Patrick Guerriero, whose organization initiated the original lawsuit in question.