Jonathan Turley is Not a Reliable Authority on the Constitution

[TomCADem]

I know Glenn Greenwald gets the most attention as a so-called contrarian liberal lawyer who first made their name attacking the Obama administration from the "left" while now defending Trump from the career government employees, er the "Deep State." But lets not forget Jonathan Turley who also made a living as a constitutional scholar who attacked President Obama from the "left." Well, not he is making a living defending Trump:

http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/11/15/jonathan-turley-reacts-trump-impeachment-call-democrats-espaillat-cohen-fudge-green

I have to ask who made Greenwald and Turley the kind of liberal legal scholars? Up is down, left is right, and now "liberal" scholars have no problem with Trump acting in an authoritarian manner, threatening to prosecute their political adversaries, ban immigrants based on religion, and appoint cronies who gleefully use their office to pad their pockets.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/2/10/1632172/-Jonathon-Turley-is-Not-a-Reliable-Authority-on-the-Constitution

Jonathan Turley is not your ally. He poses as a liberal, as a Democrat, but he never fails to attack liberals. Now he’s got a new gig: defending Trump.

* * *

But Turley. He was on the scene in the early Obama years being absurdly harsh on the new President in his hysterical falsetto. He even got John Cusack to cite him (in the usual way: “Jonathan Turley is a ‘constitutional scholar’ and he agrees with me so there!”) as he was in a “disenchantment” tizzy over the then President. Somehow, he fell out of the scene to a major degree, but he found plenty to do backstage like, help Republicans fight Obamacare, which, ironically, was because of his so-called fear of executive authority overreach.

Now, Turley is enjoying his role as Trump defender on Morning Joe (his new buddy) as well as other places, essentially arguing that the EO on these countries is the prerogative of the president and his broad and overwhelming power. He’s disparaging the 9th circuit, gleefully. I kinda would’ve thunk that those 3 judges might qualify as “constitutional scholars,” but I guess the tummy rub from Scarborough is more valuable than integrity.

He picks and chooses what has relevance under the guise of “constitutional scholarly-ness.” If the not-in-the-executive-order “Muslim ban” talk, in his opinion, can’t be included in the legal argument, then he declares it so. If the not-in-the-executive-order claim that “Obama chose these countries,” sustains his argument in his opinion, then he declares it so. It’s that simple. All to be the contrarian liberal who gets to be Joe Scarborough’s best friend.

[pnwmom]

1. You lost me with Glenn Greenwald "from the left." He's a libertarian -- so he's not on the left.

He advocates socially liberal policies while pushing a rightwing economic viewpoint.

[TomCADem]

3. Totally Agree. Yet, Here is the Atlantic Describing Greenwald as the "Left"...

...while also acknowledging that Greenwald often defends Trump. My question is who the fuck ever crowned these folks the left? Yet, even on DU, many folks cited Greenwald and Turley as voices for the left.

My take is that the mainstream media enabled them for acting like liberal contrarians. However, once Trump won the Presidency, they did not want to be lost in the crowd with most every other liberal attacking Trump. So, to once again chase the spotlight, they began to defend Trump from the left in order to appease their Russian/Right Wing publishers. So, you have Greenwald getting prominently featured on Brietbart as an example of a liberal defending Trump. Likewise, Fox News parades Turley.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/07/russia-trump-left/534534/

Donald Trump's Defenders on the Left

For left-wing defenders like Max Blumenthal and Glenn Greenwald, by contrast, ideology is king. Blumenthal and Greenwald loathe Trump. But they loathe hawkish foreign policy more. So they minimize Russia’s election meddling to oppose what they see as a new Cold War.

It’s a genuinely principled position. The problem is that principles are blinding them to facts.

On Tuesday on the Tucker Carlson show, Blumenthal laid out the progressive case against “Russia hysteria.” His first point was that, by obsessing about the Russia scandal, Democrats are forfeiting the chance to outline a genuinely progressive alternative to Trump. For the “corporate sellout establishment that can’t agree on a big economic message, that doesn’t favor single payer [health care],” Blumenthal argued, “this is just convenient because this gives them a way of opposing Trump without having to do anything remotely progressive.”

This is wrong. While it’s true that Democratic politicians and liberal pundits have spent a lot of time discussing the Russia scandal, it’s not true that they haven’t done “anything remotely progressive.” To the contrary, Democrats in Congress have opposed Trump’s agenda more militantly than did congressional Democrats during the Reagan and George W. Bush years. In 1981, 48 Democrats in the House and 37 in the Senate voted for Reagan’s tax cuts. In 2001, 10 Democrats in the House and 12 in the Senate supported Bush’s. By contrast, every House Democrat opposed Trump’s first big legislative push, repealing and replacing Obamacare. (Had a repeal bill come to a vote in the Senate, Democratic opposition would likely have been unanimous there too.)

[pnwmom]

4. Yeah that's nuts. They can't find any real leftists defending Trump, so they make some up.

Of course, there IS Jill Stein. . . they could have used her -- except she isn't blatantly supporting DT now, as far as I know.

[TomCADem]

5. But, She Is More Than Willing to Defend Russia...

...against charges that they meddled with our election.

[pnwmom]

6. That's true. So her loyalty to progressive causes is suspect. n/t

[DURHAM D]

2. He was billed on NBC as a constitutional law expert

at the beginning of the Clinton investigation in the 90s. He was on every damn night for years.

At the time I was told by an actual constitutional law professor that Turley taught environmental law and that all the real/legitimate constitutional law professors were laughing at Turley and the network.

[Azathoth]

7. Turley got a reputation for being a "liberal" because he used to tear into Dubya's unitary executive

nonsense and torture fetish. He was Countdown with Keith Olbermann's go-to "constitutional scholar" back in the day. I doubt he was ever really a liberal.

My hunch is that, like Cornel West, he expected recognition and deference (and a job) from the new Obama administration, and when he didn't get it he turned sour.

[emulatorloo]

8. Asshole claimed Sotomayor was not "qualified". That's when Olbermann kicked him to the curb

and so did I. Fuck that guy.