Thanks to Mitch McConnell the Scalia seat will be filled by Donald Trump

Jonathan Turley is saying right now that Trump is going to make almost unprecedented changes to the make-up of the Supreme Court.

Liberal Jonathan Turley says media have spiked the "Clinton University" fraud story

Here:

As an academic, I find both Trump University and Laureate to be deeply troubling stories. Yet, only one has been pursued by the media to any significant degree.

Jonathan Turley rips Justice Ruth "Buzzi" Ginsburg, agrees with Trump that her statements are unethical and undermine the Supreme Court

Here:

[Trump] is right. What she did is not just wrong ethically. It undermines the integrity of the Supreme Court. it's a very serious blow to that court.

Jonathan Turley call your office, Sally Kohn has already decided Christians deserve no dignity

Professor of Law Jonathan Turley, here:

'But if we are to protect the dignity of all citizens, we need to be careful that dignity is not simply a new way for the majority to decide who belongs and who does not in our “Nation’s social order.”'

Lesbian activist Sally Kohn, here:

'Will anti-gay Christians be politically and socially ostracized? I sure hope so. Just as those orthodox Christians who still believe in strict, traditional gender roles have been increasingly mocked as absurd.'

Sally Kohn affects traditionalism by residing in Brooklyn, New York, with a partner Sarah Hansen and "their" daughter Willa.

Liberal Jonathan Turley says Obama's behavior in Bergdahl affair just adds to the pile of laws Obama's broken

Here:

CNN ANCHOR: Jonathan, did the White House violate federal law?

JONATHAN TURLEY: They did. I don't think the White House is seriously arguing they're not violating federal law. To make matters worse, this is a long series of violations of federal law this president has been accused of. I testified twice in Congress about this record of the president in suspending or ignoring federal laws. This is going to add to that pile. I don't think there's much debate that they're in violation of the law.

Turley Says Obama Is Becoming The Very Danger The Constitution Was Designed To Avoid

Here:

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. ... [W]e 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.

Hillary, Holder and Shulman: Obama's Know-Nothing Government Zoo?

Hillary Holder and Shulman

Jonathan Turley in The Washington Post, here, warns about the growth of Leviathan, the administrative state, which makes monkeys out of its politically appointed overseers (or does it?):

There were times this past week when it seemed like the 19th-century Know-Nothing Party had returned to Washington. President Obama insisted he knew nothing about major decisions in the State Department, or the Justice Department, or the Internal Revenue Service. The heads of those agencies, in turn, insisted they knew nothing about major decisions by their subordinates. It was as if the government functioned by some hidden hand.

Clearly, there was a degree of willful blindness in these claims. However, the suggestion that someone, even the president, is in control of today’s government may be an illusion. ...

For much of our nation’s history, the federal government was quite small. In 1790, it had just 1,000 nonmilitary workers. In 1962, there were 2,515,000 federal employees. Today, we have 2,840,000 federal workers in 15 departments, 69 agencies and 383 nonmilitary sub-agencies. ...

[T]he Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that agencies are entitled to heavy deference in their interpretations of laws. The court went even further this past week, ruling that agencies should get the same heavy deference in determining their own jurisdictions — a power that was previously believed to rest with Congress. In his dissent in Arlington v. FCC, Chief Justice John Roberts warned: "It would be a bit much to describe the result as ‘the very definition of tyranny,’ but the danger posed by the growing power of the administrative state cannot be dismissed.”

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Doesn't this line of argument smell just a little like a pre-emptive defense of the bad monkeys who were actually up to no good? Perhaps a diversionary tactic? Throughout the article, Turley constantly refers to the untouchable agencies as "the fourth branch" of the government. Isn't this a deliberate rhetorical shift? The fourth estate, the press, has been the traditional conception from the time of Carlyle. The fourth branch appears to be a recent innovation, a neologism originating in a leftist critique of the media when captured by the elected, usually Republican, government (as fine a description of the current Obama regime as any, which might be a reason Turley seeks to redeploy the term for what conservatives have long termed the managerial state to keep the focus off the compromised media--it's more prudent for a liberal to change the subject from media complicity when it's media complicity with liberalism we're talking about).

It's also suspicious when liberals start talking like conservatives just when their side starts getting its feet held to the fire. And isn't it also a little rich to hear John Roberts warning about the growing power of the administrative state when on behalf of the third branch of government he basically shoved ObamaCare down the throats of the American people against their will? Or is Leviathan so irresistable that the judiciary follows the legislative in ceding its own power to the faceless bureaucracy?

It would probably behoove the cause of liberty more to forego a special prosecutor in the IRS scandal at this time simply in order to keep televised hearings before the eyeballs of all. Educating the people about the malfeasance of the so-called fourth branch under Obama is job one in order to pierce the fourth estate's media halo around their hero Obama.

Jonathan Turley: Assertion Of Executive Privilege In Fast And Furious Offends Against Separation Of Powers

Here:

"The assertion in my view is facially overbroad and excessive. It is the latest example of sweeping claims of executive power and privilege by this Administration. Congress has ample reason to investigate this operation, which involves alleged criminal acts that may have resulted in the death of third parties, including a U.S. agent. The Justice Department is accused of complicity in one of the most ill-conceived and harmful operations in recent years. The very officials and agency accused of wrongdoing is claiming that it can withhold documents from a committee with oversight responsibilities. ...

"Holder insists that they fall within the “deliberative process” privilege. The position however could sharply curtail the ability of Congress to be a check and balance in such controversies. ...

"The use of the privilege in my view raises serious questions over the separation of powers in the tripartite system. ...

"My greatest concern rests with the impact on checks and balances in a system already left anemic by ever-expanding claims of executive power."

Jonathan Turley: Obama's Deportation Order "One More Brick In The Wall Of The Imperial Presidency"

So here:

"It raises some troubling questions, again, about President Obama['s] assertion of executive power. While liberals again celebrate the unilateral action, they ignore that danger that the next president may also simply chose to ignore whole areas of the federal law and criminal code in areas ranging from the environment to employment discrimination. It is one more brick in the wall of the Imperial Presidency constructed under Barack Obama — a wall that may prove difficult to dismantle for citizens in the future."

Liberal Jonathan Turley Smells An Imperial President In Obama's 'Recess' Appointments

Because the Congress wasn't in recess:

Yet the latest recess appointments push this controversy to a new extreme. The shortest prior period for a recess appointment in recent history was a break of 10 days. In this case, Congress did not intend to take such a recess and took steps to "stay in business" to prevent any end run by the president. Under the Constitution, neither chamber of Congress can recess for more than three days without the consent of the other chamber. This winter, the House expressly declined to give consent — holding sessions every three days to prevent any recess appointments. Moreover, this session was hardly "pro forma." Just three days after going into the session in December, Congress passed the president's demand for a two-month payroll tax holiday extension. So the Obama administration was doing business with Congress on important legislation while simultaneously claiming that Congress was functionally out of session.

Yeah, but most of the House went home, leaving a skeleton crew behind to pass the payroll tax holiday extension for two months, repudiating an earlier vote in the House which called for a one year extension.

Just as bad, the skeleton crew also raised a tax on mortgages for two years to pay for the lousy two month extension. The new tax on mortgages is not just a first, but is utterly insane at a time when the Fed is doing everything it can to stimulate housing through long term interest rate interventions. A tax will only suppress home-buying.

If Republicans had any balls, they'd remove Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor for that.

It's not just an imperial presidency at work in this case, but an unrepresentative House of Representatives.

See Turley's complete remarks for USA Today here, which provide a very reasonable interpretation of the meaning of the conditions under which recess appointments may be made, i.e. when a vacancy occurs during a recess.

Obama's appointments didn't occur during a recess, and the vacancies didn't occur during one, so they're wrong. And so were George Bush's.

In NDAA America Embraced Authoritarianism With Little More Than A Pause Between Drinks

So says liberal Jonathan Turley.

Read the whole stinging rebuke of Obama and both political parties, and of the American people, here.

You have the evil government you deserve.

Liberal Lawyer Jonathan Turley Rightly Attacks Obama Administration For Support of Repackaging Blasphemy as Hate Speech

In The LA Times (link):

This week in Washington, the United States is hosting an international conference obliquely titled "Expert Meeting on Implementing the U.N. Human Rights Resolution 16/18." The impenetrable title conceals the disturbing agenda: to establish international standards for, among other things, criminalizing "intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of … religion and belief." The unstated enemy of religion in this conference is free speech, and the Obama administration is facilitating efforts by Muslim countries to "deter" some speech in the name of human rights.