The Washington Blade reports on the letter:

“As Members who believe that DOMA is unconstitutional and support the President’s decision to stop defending it, we believe that the law is not factually or legally justifiable and were interested in hearing what arguments might possibly be made in its defense,” the lawmakers write.

Congress picked up the tab and defense of the law, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing any marriages except those between one man and one woman, when President Barack Obama announced in February that he believed the law was unconstitutional, and therefore indefensible.

The suit relates to a longstanding conflict between pro-life groups like SBA List and pro-life Democrats over the legislators’ votes for federal health care reform, which the groups stubbornly maintain, against the opinion of most experts, will pour new federal funding into coverage for abortion. When Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-Ohio) challenged the group’s plans to erect a billboard alleging he voted for taxpayer-funded abortion, the case went before the state election commission, and the owner of the billboards refused to post the ads for fear of becoming entangled in the case.

As a result, SBA List filed suit last week claiming the Ohio law was unconstitutional because the government is unjustly empowering itself to determine truth and falsehood in elections. In the end, Judge Timothy Black did not address the constitutional merits of the case, arguing instead that that SBA List did not face irreparable harm from the commission’s execution of its statutory duty to determine whether a political advertisement violates Ohio’s law. It was the private billboard company, not the commission, after all, that ultimately decided not to run the advertisements.

That said, the case will likely stay alive long after the elections are over. SBA list president Marjorie Dannenfelser immediately signaled her intention to appeal the ruling, arguing that the Ohio law “effectively gives a state agency the ability to police free speech.”

“I am seriously concerned that the Democrats’ health reform bill violates the Constitution of the United States of America,” Ensign said in a statement. “Is it really constitutional for this body to tell all Americans that they MUST buy health insurance coverage?”

Two thoughts: First, whatever Congress is empowered to do is not, ultimately, for Congress to decide — that’s a job for the courts. (And you can bet that there will be no absence of lawsuits if the individual mandate survives the process to become law.)

And second, why should Congress tolerate a system under which folks without insurance can still receive emergency care on everyone else’s dime? Indeed, even former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a thoracic surgeon, has said that requiring everyone to buy into coverage pools is “about the only way” to fix the nation’s dysfunctional health care system.

“We have 46 million people who don’t have insurance out there,” Frist told the Fox Business Network in September. “Somebody’s going to have to pay for that. If they can pay for it, they should be responsible to paying for it. And, if not, there are going to be taxes, excise taxes, user taxes on companies like Aetna, on individuals.

“And I’m hard-core Republican,” Frist added.

The little-noticed provision raises constitutional questions about who has the power to control the release of detainees — the president, Congress or the courts?

Lawyers representing Guantanamo detainees are already calling the law an unconstitutional suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, as SCOTUSblog notes today. Sabin Willett, the lead lawyer representing the 13 Uighurs who have appealed to the Supreme Court to review their case, today wrote to the court urging it to review the decision of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., in Kiyemba v. Obama, which prohibits the federal courts from ordering any detainees released into the United States. As a result, while according to American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Jonathon Hafetz, Guantanamo detainees have so far won about 26 of 31 habeas corpus cases decided by federal courts so far, most remain imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. Lawyers, including Willett, have argued that the result is effectively to deny them the right to habeas corpus that the Supreme Court ruled they have in Boumediene v. Bush.

In his letter today, Willett urged the Supreme Court to take up the case, saying that “a failure either to reverse or affirm the decision below will leave unsettled a question that goes to the heart of habeas jurisdiction. …”

The court is expected to decide today whether or not to grant certiorari and hear the appeal in the Kiyemba case.