Full Faith and Credit: Big Guy?

It is easy to see from the pre- and post-Katrina failures that the nation lacks leadership for our huge expensive government. It is less obvious but of possibly farther reaching effect in many other ways.

Supposedly, the Virginia portion of the appeal argument over the nasty custody case took place. No reports are available yet. This blog has had several posts on the facts and particulars.

The gist remains:

• We have a state with civil unions (Vermont).
• A DoMA state (Virginia).
• A lesbian couple who had a baby by artificial insemination, then dissolved their civil union.
• A birth mother who took the baby to a state that does not and does not intend to cut any slack to civil unions.
• That mother is shopping for her venue in disregard of federal law for any couple, married or not, natural birth or not.
• Virginia judges are playing their states rights card and spitting in the full-faith and credit tradition of other states' laws.

That's all good theater, but what do it have to do with us? The question, of course, is where are the leaders, the mediators, the statesmen?

A hard-nosed politician, like Lyndon Johnson, or a softy saint, like Jimmy Carter, would have picked up the phone a few times. Guts, morals, sensibility and the good of the nation would have demanded it.

I don't see any of that leadership out of Washington. I don't expect to.

Instead, we founder and flail about, in prolonged court battles, in wasteful legislative contests distracting us from the serious business at hand. Where are our decisive leaders?