Given PBS & NPR (& NEA & NEH & ...), how is this a new question?

The arguments for "compulsory appeal" seem to fall into two equally absurd camps:

1. The President's raison d'etre is to "execute" federal laws. But there is no basis, none, to insist or even suggest that "appealing" is part of "executing." So long as the Executive Branch is enforcing the law, its constitutional obligations are fulfilled. The appellate process has nothing to do with it.

2. The presidential oath requires to President to "uphold and defend the Constitution." Again, a duly enacted federal law is properly declared unconstitutional by an Article III court under the Article III judicial power, but is not appealed. Again: How, exactly, has the Constitution not been "upheld and defended"?

Let's recall that the Attorney General is not a constitutional officer and that, to approach the asymptote, the Constitution does not require that there even be a Department of Justice, let alone that it do anything.

It's an interesting comparison-and-contrast to see people (not necessarily Kowal) try simultaneously to argue that:

1. The Equal Protection Clause, which is utterly unambiguous, must -- as an axiom! -- be read exclusively in the most constricting original-meaning-originalist context possible, but ...

2. The Citizenship Clause's "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" verbiage, which is vague gobbledygook today but had an exactingly clear original meaning, can be invoked in a myopic, whatever-works-now manner never remotely contemplated by the authors or ratifiers of the Amendment.

I consider mocking the mockworthy such a high value-added social good as to almost qualify as Randian altruism (i.e., we shouldn't do it unless we're paid to do it).

(P.S. If you find the FSM too much of an artificial construct, then try the Holy Prepuce, which is a very real element of more than one dogmatic Christian sect (but just as mockworthy as the FSM).

"Culture" has no rights. For that matter, neither do "institutions." Only individuals have rights.

Therefore, the only question is whether those rights will be recognized or trampled. And if the latter, then dressing it up in blathering gobbledygook about "respecting culture" or "defending institutions" only makes it that much more despicable.