It must be remembered that, even where parties have no standing to sue, members of the Legislative and Executive Branches are not excused from making constitutional determinations in the regular course of their duties. Government officials must make a conscious decision to obey the Constitution whether or not their acts can be challenged in a court of law and then must conform their actions to these principled determinations.
I agree that members of the Executive and Legislative Branches--and VP Cheney as well--have their own Constitutional oaths and obligations, and are obliged to act responsibly upon them. Further, I oppose an imperial judiciary (especially when subject to an alien, unAmerican occupying force, as now appears to be the case). I am frankly not eager, pace Walter Dellinger, to see this Court make more Establishment Clause law than absolutely necessary.
Nonetheless, I do favor ongoing dialogue, and occasionally some tension, among the Branches on crucial Constitutional issues, and this massive undermining, and tacit overruling, of Flast will leave politically popular executive overreach on Establishment Clause issues with no effective challengers (i.e., persons with judicial standing to bring suit) in the supposedly non-political judicial branch. That can't be a healthy thing in the long term. (I guess very long term--the other branches will turn over long before this Court, absent a Coulter-like dispensation.)
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