Does Obama mean it on DOMA nondefense?

It's a good question indeed. President Obama has walked a tightrope, to put it politely, with defending the indefensible Defense of Marriage Act in federal courts.

That said, new suits in federal court in New York, where there's no recent precedent on gay rights, forced his hand — and he let his hand be carefully forced.

First, the nondefense applies only to Section 3 of DOMA, to be technical. And, not even fully to that.

Jonathan Turley does a good job of both legal and political parsing of the announcement and says, "It's pretty much a political decision." Having had time to read more since this afternoon, I'd tend to agree.

The more obvious explanation is that it didn't feel it could politically oppose DOMA before the midterm elections. I found Holder's statement to be rather forced and unconvincing. ...

Everyone that I've spoken to believes this decision was motivated by political considerations and not legal considerations. Eric Holder has proven an extremely political attorney general, much in the same way as the Bush attorneys general. His position not to prosecute torture, his decision to defend DOMA, and his prior decisions on DOMA were all driven by political considerations in the view of his critics. So I think that's what the motivation is.

And, although he just comments in passing as a first draft, looks like Greenwald's skeptic meter was left idling at the curb on this one. I mean, in light of Turley's comments, and as much as Greenwald has been skeptical of Obama and Holder before, there's a fair amount of wishful thinking on his part, perhaps.

Now, Turley notes, rightfully, that this is better than nothing.

But, a lot better? Well, maybe not.

Meanwhile, Greenwald has now fully addressed the Holder/Obama decision. And, basically, he expands on his defense of Obama on DOMA. And that's despite mentioning how Obama has politicized other civil liberties issues! I know this is a hugely personal issue to you, Glenn, but read Jonathan Turley, then take off the blinders.

So, the claim of Lisa Hirschman in this other Salon story, that Obama's setting a trap for the GOP? It rings hollow; if anything else, he's setting a trap for people who don't parse his words, and who aren't well-informed gay rights activists.