Jonathan Turley Quotes

Obama is a tyrant the same way FDR was a tyrant. He has a view of presidential power that states: the government is in control of the country, and the president is in charge of the government. He's taken an imperial view of the presidency.

That's the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want.

As President Nixon says, presidents can do almost anything, and President Nixon has done many things that nobody would have thought of doing.

Here is the operating motto of the Obama White House: 'So let it be written, so let it be done!' Like Yul Brynner's Pharaoh Ramses character in Cecil B. DeMille's 'The Ten Commandments,' the demander in chief stands with arms akimbo issuing daily edicts to his constitution-subverting minions.

If Mr. Roosevelt can do what he likes without consulting Congress, and we give him our boys, God alone knows what he will do with them.

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion … and you allow him to make war at pleasure. … If today he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may see no probability he would say to you, “Be silent!, I see if you don’t.”

The presidency is seemingly bound by law, but in practice it can do just about anything it pleases. It can order up troops anywhere in the world

Working for President Nixon was the most extraordinary professional experience of my life. He was endlessly fascinating: brilliant, visionary, kind, generous, warm, funny - and yes, a good man.

Every president since George Washington has taken executive privilege seriously. Every Republican president has.

By this act the president alone is empowered to make the law, to fix in his mind what acts, words, what thoughts or looks, shall constitute such a crime.

I think that presidents don't give up power that has accrued to them by the precedent of previous presidents. Even when they say they would like to, I think once they get there they don't give it up.

If a president can enforce a part of a law and delay a part of a law, then does he have a power to not enforce any law he so chooses? If he can allow illegal aliens to freely run across our border, can he force legal citizens out of the country? Where would be the end of his power?

For Obama to save himself, he should be thinking about the example of an unlikely Republican predecessor: Richard Nixon.

So far as I'm concerned, Ronald Reagan was the best president. Nixon was the worst. Some of his policies were okay, but he disgraced the office.

I’m not your lawyer. But if I were in your shoes, I’d tell the President to burn the tapes immediately and then proclaim he’d done so as a matter of national security and executive privilege and out of an obligation to protect the office of the presidency.

The constitution has never greatly bothered any wartime President.

Is there any statute that gives the President authority in any way to change the spelling?

We have the President assuming powers that are never going to end.

I’m not criticizing Richard Nixon except to say that he’s a conservative.

The powers conferred by the Constitution upon the Executive enable him to shape the foreign policy of this nation almost independent of the Legislature. A scheming and unscrupulous President can involve the country in serious complications, commit it to an unwise policy, or at least render its foreign diplomacy ridiculous before Congress may have an opportunity to check him.

I don’t know if President (George W.) Bush understood how extreme some of the arguments were about executive power that some people in his administration were making.

The Military Commissions Act gives the President the privilege of kings.

For better or worse, a critical factor in high level policy making is the President as a human being. Crudely put, there’s no right or wrong way; there’s the President’s way.

Obama must scrutinize and disassemble the post-Sept. 11 imperial presidency, even if he reduces his own power in the process.

There are a lot of presidents in both parties - including President Obama - who had strong claims of executive privilege that I certainly think went too far.