Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley Sounds the Alarm (better late than never)

by Jeannie DeAngelis

"What we're seeing now is the usurpation of authority that's unprecedented in this country."

Jonathan Turley, faithful Obama supporter and liberal professor of constitutional law at George Washington University* Law School, is sounding the alarm that "a system in which a single individual is allowed to rewrite legislation or ignore legislation is a system that borders on authoritarianism."


Question for Mr. Turley: what kind of constitutional law professor votes for an inexperienced community organizer who believes that the U.S. Constitution is "fundamentally flawed" in the first place?


Legal scholar Turley now feels that it is incumbent upon him to appear on The Kelly File with Megyn Kelly to point out a minor detail that the "fundamental transformer" would probably be flattered to hear, which is that "the framers would be horrified because everything they did was to create balance between the branches of government, and we've lost that."


Turley's forewarning: "What we're seeing now is the usurpation of authority that's unprecedented in this country." 


Isn't it a little late for the brilliant Turley to be so concerned?  After all, he can also thank himself for being caught up in the "cult of personality" he accuses the left of being caught up in now, which he blames for causing the "the shift of gravity within that system in a very dangerous way that makes it unstable."


What did the good professor think would happen when he voted for a left-leaning, America-hating character who promised to bring "Hope and Change" to a hopeful nation that really didn't need Barack Obama to change a thing?


Now, six years into this mess, Turley is slowly waking from his fevered Obama dream and hitting the cable talk-show circuit, saying things like:

Well, I'm afraid it's quite serious because the framers created a system that was designed to avoid one principle thing, the concentration of power in any one branch. Because that balancing between these branches in this fixed orbit is what not only gives stability to our system but it protects us against authoritarian power, it protects civil liberties from abuse.

If Americans are dizzy from being spun around in a vortex of progressive policies that wreak havoc on every aspect of American life, Turley understands the phenomenon: "what we've been seeing is the shift of gravity within [the] system."  After all, as Mr. Turley pointed out, Obama, who transfers funds on a whim, clearly indicated in the State of the Union that he has "adopted ... unilateralism ... as policy."


Professor, the tip-off that trouble was on the way should have been when a power-hungry neophyte who sold himself as someone who could slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet convinced besotted low-information voters, one of whom was you, that our country needed fixing. 

Attempting to sidestep culpability for helping to place the nation in a dangerous position by voting for a megalomaniac, the legal scholar warned that, in his view, Obama is "essentially put[ting] our system off line."  Turley also noted, "This is not the first time that convenience has become the enemy of principle. But we've never seen it to this extent." 


As Professor Turley looks back and questions his lack of discernment in choosing Obama to defend the Constitution, he predicts that America too will one day "look back at this period [and] see nothing but confusion as to why people remained so silent when the president asserted ... unilateral actions."


Sans those Sigmund Freud spectacles he used to wear, Turley injected a smidgen of psychobabble into the discussion with Megyn when he called Americans on both the right and the left "a nation of enablers." 


In one respect, he's right.


Barack Obama might as well be lighting up his Marlboros with rolled up copies of the U.S. Constitution.  Meanwhile, where are Republican guardians of constitutional fidelity Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Paul Ryan (R-WI)?  Why, they're schmoozing and sampling cotton candy dusted with orange zest and homemade confections served in dishes made of pure sugar at a state dinner in honor of France's President François Hollande.


Sorry to say, but Cantor and Ryan sitting in a heated tent on the South Lawn listening to Mary J. Blige sing "Ain't Nobody" screams what Turley called "turning a blind eye to a fundamental change in our system."


Based on the palpable terror in Jonathan's voice and eyes, the legal scholar must be convinced that eventually "many people will come to loathe that they remained silent during this period."


Turley is right; the "president is allowed to take a law and just simply say, 'I'm going to ignore this,' or, 'I'm going to shift funds that weren't appropriated by Congress into this area.'"  Meanwhile, there is an eerie ambivalence by many who choose to ignore our system becoming a "pretense of democracy."


Winding down, Turley touched upon the wishy-washy Congress being hesitant to "rein in" what Kelly called a president who is seemingly "drunk on his own power."


Then Turley shifted blame to the federal courts for "engaging in a policy of avoidance," but not before the Georgetown law professor, who said he came to Congress as a young page, pointed out the "degree of passivity in Congress."  Turley told Kelly that he remembered when Democrats were "people that fiercely believed in the institution. It didn't matter what party held the White House." 


Yeah, but that was then and this is now, and never the twain shall meet.


So after all the Kelly File banter, Megyn summed up by highly recommending Turley's blog, which describes what's happening in Latin with the words "Res ipsa loquitur."  That's why nothing more needs to be said about what's happening in America by Turley or anyone else, because in common translation, "the thing speaks for itself."

*corrected. Turley was identified erroneously as teaching at Georgetown University.



Jeannie hosts a blog at www.jeannie-ology.com

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/02/jonathan_turley_says_the_thing_speaks_for_itself.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.