Cheerleading Gingrich's attempted coup was brought him to the public notice, and he has never really left it behind, let alone lived it down....

every issue. That does not sound like someone who is impartially applying the law to given situations.

The President hasn't been right about everything, but he certainly hasn't been wrong about everything either.

this shift did not begin with President Obama, but that “it has accelerated at an alarming rate under this administration.” Turley emphasized that he does not view the president as a dictator, but he does think the problem is urgent.

The following is an excerpt of his prepared remarks:

As someone who voted for President Obama and agrees with many of his policies, it is often hard to separate the ends from the means of presidential action. Indeed, despite decades of thinking and writing about the separation of powers, I have had momentary lapses where I privately rejoiced in seeing actions on goals that I share, even though they were done in the circumvention of Congress. For example, when President Obama unilaterally acted on greenhouse gas pollutants, I was initially relieved. I agree entirely with the priority that he has given this issue. However, it takes an act of willful blindness to ignore that the greenhouse regulations were implemented only after Congress rejected such measures and that a new sweeping regulatory scheme is now being promulgated solely upon the authority of the President. We are often so committed to a course of action that we conveniently dismiss the means as a minor issue in light of the goals of the Administration. Many have embraced the notion that all is fair in love and politics. However, as I have said too many times before Congress, in our system it is often more important how we do something than what we do. Priorities and policies (and presidents) change. What cannot change is the system upon which we all depend for our rights and representation.

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/02/27/power-presidency-turley

It was ok when it was Bush...the other deserter.

in the republican tittie-bar you gotta jump up on the table and rip off all your clothes and set yourself on fire to be noticed at all.

There. I said it.

Fair and balanced, though, even true....

He's a turd. Flush him.

Ignoring all it's constitutional lapses and outright nose thumbing.

But now that a Democrat is back in the Oval Office he's suddenly gone all constitutional law professor on us and he's making the rounds to keep us informed of the evil deeds of yet another Democratic miscreant.

Oh, well, I guess he'd never get his check from Fox if he didn't talk a lot of negative shit on Obama.

Just another media whore.

Regime. He has some positions I don't agree with, some of which I find flat out bizarre, and he also
has many I agree with.

Just a snapshot: snip*Politics

Professor Turley is widely regarded as a champion of the rule of law, and his stated positions in many cases and his self-proclaimed "socially liberal agenda",[8] have led liberal and progressive thinkers to also consider him a champion for their causes, especially on issues such as separation of church and state, environmental law,[10][16] civil rights,[7][17] and the illegality of torture.[18][19][20] Politico has referred to Turley as a "liberal law professor and longtime civil libertarian".[21] Turley has nevertheless exhibited his disagreement with rigid ideological stances in contradiction to the established law with other stated and published opinions.[10][21]

In numerous appearances on Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachel Maddow Show, he has called for criminal prosecution of Bush administration officials for war crimes, including torture.[22]

In USA Today in October 2004, he famously argued for the legalization of polygamy,[23] provoking responses from writers such as Stanley Kurtz.[24][25]

Commenting on the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which, he contends, does away with habeas corpus, Turley says, "It’s something that no one thought—certainly I didn’t think—was possible in the United States. And I am not too sure how we got to this point. But people clearly don’t realize what a fundamental change it is about who we are as a country. What happened today changed us."[20]

He is a critic of special treatment for the church in law, asking why there are laws that "expressly exempt faith-based actions that result in harm".[26]

Turley disagrees with the theory that dealing with bullies is just a part of growing up, claiming that they are "no more a natural part of learning than is parental abuse a natural part of growing up" and believes that "litigation could succeed in forcing schools to take bullying more seriously".[27]

He has written extensively about the injustice of the death penalty noting that, "Human error remains a principal cause of botched executions" and opining that "eventually society will be forced to deal directly with a fundamental moral question: Has death itself become the intolerable element of the death penalty?"[28]

He worries that the Supreme Court is injecting itself into partisan politics.[29] He has frequently expressed the view that recent nominees to the court hold extreme views.[30][31]

However, Turley has a strong libertarian streak and sometimes infuriates the left with a contrarian position.[10] For instance, he has said, “It is hard to read the Second Amendment and not honestly conclude that the Framers intended gun ownership to be an individual right.”[8] Moreover, Turley testified in favor of the Clinton impeachment.[32]

In another commentary that outraged progressives, Turley defended Judge Henry E. Hudson's ruling declaring the individual mandate unconstitutional for violating the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, saying: "It’s very thoughtful — not a screed. I don’t see any evidence this is motivated by Judge Hudson’s personal beliefs...Anybody who’s dismissing this opinion as a political screed has obviously not read the opinion".[21]

Turley described Eric Holder in an Op-ed as President Barack Obama's sin-eater. "For Obama, there has been no better sin eater than Holder. When the president promised CIA employees early in his first term that they would not be investigated for torture, it was the attorney general who shielded officials from prosecution. When the Obama administration decided it would expand secret and warrantless surveillance, it was Holder who justified it. When the president wanted the authority to kill any American he deemed a threat without charge or trial, it was Holder who went public to announce the “kill list” policy. Last week, the Justice Department confirmed that it was Holder who personally approved the equally abusive search of Fox News correspondent James Rosen’s e-mail and phone records in another story involving leaked classified information. In the 2010 application for a secret warrant, the Obama administration named Rosen as “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator” to the leaking of classified materials. The Justice Department even investigated Rosen’s parents’ telephone number, and Holder was there to justify every attack on the news media."[33]

In a December 2013 congressional hearing, responding to a question from Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) about the danger posed by President Obama's apparent unilateral modification of laws passed by congress, Turley said, "The danger is quite severe. The problem with what the president is doing is that he's not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system. He's becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid. That is the concentration of power in every single branch. This Newtonian orbit that the three branches exist in is a delicate one but it is designed to prevent this type of concentration. There is two trends going on which should be of equal concern to all members of Congress. One is that we have had the radical expansion of presidential powers under both President Bush and President Obama. We have what many once called an imperial presidency model of largely unchecked authority. And with that trend we also have the continued rise of this fourth branch. We have agencies that are quite large that issue regulations. The Supreme Court said recently that agencies could actually define their own or interpret their own jurisdiction." [34]
Testimony before Congress

The conceptual thread running through many of the issues taken on by Turley is that they involve claims of Executive Privilege. For example, he said, "the president’s claim of executive authority based on Article II would put our system on a slippery slope."[35] He has argued against national security exceptions to fundamental constitutional rights.[30][36]

He is a frequent witness before the House and Senate on constitutional and statutory issues.[37][38] as well as tort reform legislation.[1]

Turley has testified in Congress against President Bush's warrantless domestic surveillance program and was lead counsel in a case challenging it. In regard to warrantless wiretaps he noted that, "Judge Anna Diggs Taylor chastised the government for a flagrant abuse of the Constitution and, in a direct message to the president, observed that there are no hereditary kings in America."[39]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Turley

to take the president to task for constitutional misdeeds.

IMO, Obama is more than a little deserving of criticism for thumbing his nose at the 4th Amendment. But to compare his actions in the Bergdahl incident with the crimes committed by Nixon is more than a little bit of a stretch.

Odd that he goes on Keith Olbermann to bad mouth Bush and then appears with Haniity to trash Obama. Makes him seem like a mercenary opportunist rather than a constitutional purist.

I think he gets invited by anyone who wants a legal expert on their side, they know
he is not one sided..the opportunists are more related to the networks than Turley,
generally speaking.

In the end, this blow up will not be a success for the Republicans but they'll
try and waste enough time on it.

safe to critique Bush. He's still sore over getting his ass smacked by Reggie Walton in Kucinich v Obama...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=107135

varied, there has been no secret about that, ever.

He wrote about Bush as early as 2003. Who decided it was cool? He has no history
of taking one side on a variety of positions.

Turley is an opportunist.

one political side and they certainly have not been about opportunity for self gain.
He has been quite vocal about them.


Disagreements are one thing, what you suggest is unsupportable.

I realized that he was not in fact a partisan, but rather the type of whore who tells each side what they want to hear. Notice that he didn't appear on Hanity's program and talk shit about Bush. If he were indeed an objective observer whose only interest was the integrity of the constitution he would have had the cojones to tell that to the nutcase fox viewers.

Similarly, when he wants to trash a Democratic administration, he doesn't go on any MSNBC program and do it. No, he goes running to fox where he knows he'll get paid handsomely for talking shit about Obama.

Unfortunately the always-on news networks have created a goldmine for the for hire pundits willing to tell both sides what they want to hear.

You can defend Turdley all you want, but I don't believe he really stands for anything except getting wealthier by selling his opinions to cable news stations wrapped in a scholarly sounding spiel.

against Sotomayo and generally rubber stamps whatever House Republicans say about Obama's supposed imperial tendencies (Turley thinks Obama is obligated to keep deporting DREAMers, for example).

And he soiled himself about the NDAA in 2011 despite not having read it. Because Obama is a scary dictator, etc.

So, screw him

He is a professor, he has a trained opinion, agree or disagree with him, I have.

But he was out in front about Bush and torture and executive privilege..that was
what the other poster and myself were discussing.

Every presidential action in his mind is cause for pants-wetting. Thus, Obama failing to deport dreamers or not defending DOMA or signing an NDAA that explicitly avoided the detention of citizens issue become just as scary, and met with the same level of rhetoric, as Bush's torturing people.

It's his schtick. Everything from blowjobs to torture to not endorsing homophobic discrinination--all of it is the death of the republic.

forcefully against does not constitute an equivalent to Chicken Little.

You can appreciate that about him or not.

are not bigoted asshats, they merely disagree with liberals.

Reminder: this libertarian prick assailed Sotomayor for lacking "intellectual depth" and claimed she did not have "a profound understanding of the law."

Thus echoing his royal prick of a colleague at GW, Jeffery Rosen.

And produces shrieking hyperbole about Obama on a monthly basis, in the past comparing him to kings and dictators, and saying his 'power grabs' have brought the usa to a "tipping point" and repeatedly bleating about how dangerous Obama is.

His record for voting for Obama as well as his agreements and disagreements on executive
privilege and the like, are all on the record. His record of admonishing Bush is also part
of that record. Turley never fit in any one mindset...that is the point.

The following is an excerpt of his prepared remarks:

As someone who voted for President Obama and agrees with many of his policies, it is often hard to separate the ends from the means of presidential action. Indeed, despite decades of thinking and writing about the separation of powers, I have had momentary lapses where I privately rejoiced in seeing actions on goals that I share, even though they were done in the circumvention of Congress. For example, when President Obama unilaterally acted on greenhouse gas pollutants, I was initially relieved. I agree entirely with the priority that he has given this issue. However, it takes an act of willful blindness to ignore that the greenhouse regulations were implemented only after Congress rejected such measures and that a new sweeping regulatory scheme is now being promulgated solely upon the authority of the President. We are often so committed to a course of action that we conveniently dismiss the means as a minor issue in light of the goals of the Administration. Many have embraced the notion that all is fair in love and politics. However, as I have said too many times before Congress, in our system it is often more important how we do something than what we do. Priorities and policies (and presidents) change. What cannot change is the system upon which we all depend for our rights and representation.

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/02/27/power-presidency-turley

Turley:

If you imagine only libertarians will take this administration to task on executive
privilege you may need tranquilizers to get through the reading.

Have a good night.

the Clean Air Act.

When's the last time Turley pissed conservatives off, 2007?

Since 2009, he's been pretty much holding hands with Rand Paul and Darrel Issa.

I recognize him as a principled man who has his opinions and I don't always agree and I
don't need to to see the distinctions.

I don't see his positions aimed to condemn Obama for the sake of doing so with some
deviant premise attached. His political leanings are not ones you can pigeon hole.

Barack Obama.

the courts have always gone the other way.

He's like the Bill Kristol of legal analysis.

I didn't watch television news while Bush was president because i tired of the cheerleading in early 2001.

One night, after Keith, I flipped over to the History Channel and there was Turley, on a show about Area 51.

Below is my column today in the Los Angeles Times. The column follows the recognition of the name for Area 51, which produced a great deal of media coverage.

Last week, the U.S. government declassified a report about a secret facility in Nevada. Such declassifications are nothing new but, from the report’s 400 pages, two words immediately jumped out: Area 51. The government had finally acknowledged the name of a controversial base in the desert north of Las Vegas where it conducted top-secret research.

The document’s release will do little to quash the glut of Area 51 conspiracy theories about recovered alien spaceships and government cover-ups. But the real cover-up there has nothing to do with UFOs. Area 51 was more than a national security site; it was also an alleged crime scene, and at least two good men may have died from what occurred there. They were not hurt by aliens but by their own government, which refused to declassify information they needed to understand what had happened to them.

During the 1990s, I represented Area 51 workers in two lawsuits. The suits, which forced the first official recognition of the base — though not its name — were the first against a “black facility,” one whose very existence is denied by the government. Over the course of the litigation, the contents of my office were classified, I was threatened with arrest, workers and their families were threatened with prosecution and we had to go as far as Moscow to find images to prove the existence of the base.

http://jonathanturley.org/2013/08/21/the-truth-is-out-there-the-real-cover-up-at-area-51/

does not like or as an end-run around provisions designed to foster accountability."

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/CandidateQA/ObamaQA/