Evolutionary law and consistency

There was an interesting bit in an article responding to the Obama administration's decision not to further defend in court the Defense of Marriage Act:

Doesn’t this sound strangely like Richard Nixon’s approach to the law? It was Nixon who told David Frost in 1977, "When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." So when the president and his attorney general refuse to defend a law they have taken an oath to uphold, isn’t that the other side of the same coin? Imagine the reaction from the left had George W. Bush announced his administration would no longer defend Roe v. Wade because he thought it unconstitutional and it would eventually be overturned by the Supreme Court.

Source: World Magazine

(That said, I'm not a big fan of the act in question. It seems to me that the legal changes made in the last century or so have already made the legal definition of marriage relatively meaningless - there's not much left to defend).

HT: Trevin Wax