Professor Jonathan Turley is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal theory to tort law.

The notion that a citizen can be sent to prison for lying about receiving a medal, while the President of the United States can unilaterally embroil the nation in an unconstitutional, foreign civil war for seven months – as was the case in 2011 with NATO Operation Unified Protector with respect to Libya – should offend the conscience of every American.

At this writing, the law in the United States is that neither the legislature or the citizens have a right to be heard when a president decides to go-it-alone in a matter of war. The only remedy for a rogue war President is impeachment, and that’s not the way it’s meant to be.

The Ninth Amendment guarantees representation in the Congress to every citizen. Accordingly – by definition – the most dangerous individual on the planet, is the man or woman who happens to be President of the United States. Such individuals preside – with unilateral, unchecked power – over a defense budget that dwarfs that of all other nations combined. As Abraham Lincoln wrote:

“Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure.”

Attorney Turley represented Dennis Kucinich and seven other congressman in an attempt to stop U.S. participation in Libya. The suit was recently dismissed without a hearing. I am the only citizen – out of 313 million – to sue the United States for being stripped of my right to representation in the Congress with regard to the Libya conflict. Whitney v. Obama is still in court.

Some day I’m going to be gone. When that happens, who’s going to do the lifting around here?

Here’s Turley’s take on the Stolen Valor Act case that will be heard this week by the United States Supreme Court:

“Once we criminalize lies, someone must determine what is a lie and what is harmless embellishment. One person who appears comfortable with that role is Judge Jay Bybee, who wrote one of the dissenting opinions in the Alvarez case. Bybee, who was an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2001 to 2003, is one of the authors of the Bush administration’s infamous ‘torture memos.’ These memos justified the use of waterboarding and were later retracted by the Bush administration as ‘flawed.’ Bybee was accused of misrepresenting legal authority to justify what many view as not just a torture program but a war crime. That form of falsehood, however, appears protected — the Justice Department didn’t even report Bybee to his bar association. In my view, misrepresenting legal authority to defend torture is far more damaging to the nation than someone prancing around with a Silver Star and some French Foreign Legion medallion. The First Amendment protects free speech, not just truthful speech. It exists to give a certain breathing room to citizens to avoid the chilling effect of the threat of prosecution. Free speech is its own disinfectant. It tends to expose lies and isolate liars.” ~Read more @ JonathanTurley.com

UPDATE (2012.02.22) – Read the transcript of the Oral Argument in United States v. Alvarez.

Dr. Craig Bowron is an internist and writer from Minneapolis.

My 79 year-old mother-in-law of 30 years recently died from pancreatic cancer. She took it head on. Never blinked. Neither did her daughters. A model. But it could have been easier.

“I head to the ER. If I’m lucky, the family will accept the news that, in a time when we can separate conjoined twins and reattach severed limbs, people still wear out and die of old age. If I’m lucky, the family will recognize that their loved one’s life is nearing its end. But I’m not always lucky. The family may ask me to use my physician superpowers to push the patient’s tired body further down the road, with little thought as to whether the additional suffering to get there will be worth it. For many Americans, modern medical advances have made death seem more like an option than an obligation. We want our loved ones to live as long as possible, but our culture has come to view death as a medical failure rather than life’s natural conclusion.” ~Read Dr. Craig Bowron’s entire piece in the Washington Post

Just as Obama deftly changed the subject from jobs and the economy to the cultural issue of protected sex, Rick Santorum sounds a dog whistle of his own:

“’I wasn’t suggesting that the president’s not a Christian,’ he said with a laugh on the CBS News program ‘Face the Nation.’”

“But he suggested that anyone who believed that the protection of natural resources was more important than satisfying man’s needs – and man, he said, could be a ‘good steward’ of the earth — was pursuing ‘a phony ideal.’”

”’The earth is not the objective. Man is the objective, and I think that a lot of radical environmentalists have it upside down,’ Mr. Santorum said. It was during a campaign stop in Ohio on Saturday that Mr. Santorum described what he called the phony theology’ of Mr. Obama’s agenda. ‘It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology,’ he said. ‘But no less a theology.’”

Read Santorum Defends Comments on Obama and Education by Brian Knowlton on NYTimes.com.

Who knew that a vote for Barack Obama was a vote for one more old white guy?

“‘The federal crackdown imperils the medical care of the estimated 730,000 patients nationwide – many of them seriously ill or dying – who rely on state-sanctioned marijuana recommended by their doctors….Somewhere in the administration, a decision was made that it would be better to close down legal, regulated systems of access for patients and send them back to the street, back to criminals….Last September, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms moved to deprive Americans who use medical marijuana of their gun rights. In an open letter to gun sellers, the ATF warned that it is unlawful to sell ‘any firearm or ammunition’ to ‘any person who uses or is addicted to marijuana, regardless of whether his or her state has passed legislation authorizing marijuana use for me dicinal purposes.’ If your doctor advises you to use medicinal pot, in other words, you can no longer legally own a gun.’” (emphasis added)

Read, Obama’s War On Pot by Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickenson

“When I set out to cover the confirmation of an obscure Hispanic jurist, I had no idea I would spark the Great Tex-Mex Takedown of the 2012 presidential race. ‘Line of the day from WAPO’s Dana Milbank,’ President Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina tweeted when the column appeared in the newspaper on Wednesday. ‘The chimichanga? It may be the only thing Republicans have left to offer Latinos.’”

Milbank has this to say in response to a demand by the Republican National Committee and the conservative Hispanic Leadership Network’s that Milbank apologize for the republication of aforementioned Tweet:

“That’s nacho place. I flauta your demands. In the chimichanga wars, I will taco no prisoners — and that’s for churro.”

As Factcheck.org’s Kathleen Hall Jamieson noted in an interview last week:

“It is if we are campaigning at a level, a decibel level that only dogs are able to hear at some level and everyone has their ears perked up and they’re fleeing, but nobody understands why it is that that’s happening.”

All of which makes me chuckle and hungry.

34 lawyers
15 soldiers
12 planters/farmers
11 businessmen/merchants
6 clergymen
5 statesmen/career politicians
4 physicians
3 teachers
1 diplomat

112th Congress (2011–2012)
539 total members*
435 representatives
100 senators
6 non-voting members

209 businessmen and women
208 public servants
200 lawyers
81 educators
34 agricultural professionals (including two almond orchard owners)
32 medical professionals (including doctors, veterinarians, ophthalmologists, dentists, a psychiatrist, psychologists, an optometrist, and nurses)
17 journalists
9 accountants
9 scientists
9 social workers
9 military reserves
7 law enforcement officers (including FBI and Border Patrol)
5 ministers
4 pilots
4 Peace Corps volunteers
2 professional football players
2 screenwriters
1 firefighter
1 astronaut
1 documentary filmmaker
1 comedian

*Many Congress members list more than one profession, which is why the totals for professions add up to more than the number of Congress members.

“If you’re calling the opposing individuals barbarians at the gates or a mob, you now are existing in a world in which language is decoupled from anything that is reasonably a referent. And as a result you not only are not describing what is out there, but you’re exhausting the capacity of the language to express outrage. It is if we are campaigning at a level, a decibel level that only dogs are able to hear at some level and everyone has their ears perked up and they’re fleeing, but nobody understands why it is that that’s happening.”

Madison County Illinois State's Attorney Tom Gibbons has received bipartisan support in his quest to end so-called "sex with the dead."

MADISON COUNTY, ILLINOIS – In a move cheered by relationship equality advocates, Madison County State’s Attorney Tom Gibbons says a law prohibiting sex with a corpse is needed. State Rep. Dan Beiser agrees: “Prohibiting sex with a dead body corrects an obvious omission in the law. If the measure passes, sex with a corpse would be a Class 2 felony, with punishment ranging from probation to seven years in prison.”

Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum opposes the measure: “When you read between the lines, it becomes clear that the true purpose of this legislation is to sacrifice all marriage – on the altar of ‘fairness’ – by criminalizing an experience The Lord intended solely for a man and a woman in a state-sanctioned, long-term relationship.” ~More

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

On a cold winter morning, Tristan Goding deals with a challenge of the job: making sure to greet passing drivers while also keeping his hands warm by covering them with his sleeve. (Credit: Sarah Priestap, Valley News)

WEST LEBANON NH – “Wavers appear in front of the store beginning in early January and continue through mid-April. The job interview typically includes a training video that shows wavers at work, twirling, dancing and jumping around with signs, making a roadside spectacle of themselves. ’Being a waver is all about energy and enthusiasm,’ potential wavers are advised in the video. They are told that they ought to get some sort of reaction from 85 to 90 percent of motorists who pass by. They should wave to children at their level, give the peace sign to young adults and a salute to police and military officers. Inevitably, wavers are subjected some heckling and rudeness from drivers. Ignore such reactions, the video says, and go on with your act. ‘If someone gives you the finger, they’re just saying you’re No. 1.’” ~Read ‘Riding The Wave For All It’s Worth’ by Katie Beth Ryan

Bartlett argues that right-wing tax policies — pushed in part by Grover Norquist and Tea Party activists — are destroying the country’s economic foundation. When he called George W. Bush out as “a pretend conservative” in his book Impostor: Why George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, Bartlett was fired from his position as a senior fellow at a conservative think tank. His new book is The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform — Why We Need It and What It Will Take.

Once known as “The Dean” of Talk Radio, Jerry Williams is one of the originators of the talk radio format.

Click here for the 56 minute monologue. Click here for an archive of classic Williams’ clips from his peak, covering afternoon drive-time on Boston’s WRKO in the early 80s.

Williams, imbued with a liberal, anti-statism attitude, shared the dial with  David Brudnoy and Gene Burns. In the aggregate, these three brilliant guys covered 45 hours a week on the same local station in Boston. You could actually learn something, because – unlike most of today’s Conservative and Liberal tribalists - Jerry, David and Gene didn’t see it as their job to tell you what to think.

For a couple of years back then, I worked on the TV side with Bill O’Reilly and Paula Zahn, housed in the same seven story Government Center building as the radio side staffed by Williams, Brudnoy and Burns. On several occasions, Williams and I talked about buying a radio station in New Hampshire, but, alas, it never happened.

Twice a year – for a week – Williams would conduct the radio version of the Cosmopolitan Sex Survey. Here, the caller, a former nun, confesses to an affair with a priest.

Williams also worked tirelessly for the successful repeal the then-new Massachusetts seat-belt law. Listen to Williams on being a friend or his annual performance of a A Child’s Christmas In Wales.

For three hours a day – 15 hours a week – Burns and his listeners civilly pondered the same question: “What is the nature and role of Government in a free society?”

Every day, Burns opened his program with the same announcement: “This program sponsored by a grant from the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.” I always remembered this. Thirty years later, the footnotes of this site, Fool For A Client and TheLaw.net, say: “Powered by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

Charles Krauthammer – who selectively criticizes only those Executive Orders he disagrees with – is, nonetheless, correct here:

“This constitutional trifecta — the state invading the autonomy of religious institutions, private companies and the individual citizen — should not surprise. It is what happens when the state takes over one-sixth of the economy.”

The totality of circumstances herein, call for a balancing test between the need for the President to receive authorization from the People via an act of Congress and my individual need for entertainment. The situation herein, clearly weighs in favor of entertainment.

That’s why, I’m completely rethinking my cynicism toward Citizens United. Turns out, it promotes transparency after all, to say nothing of the fact that it completely shields Santorum from any allegations of criminally “coordinating.”

Even a Palin wouldn’t coordinate this thing below.

These clowns are just out there, stepping on their dicks in real-time! No segment producers. No talking points. Freestylin’ in a viral world! You don’t get this kind of entertainment from your run-of-the-mill race for county sheriff. It’s absolutely awesome!

“USA! USA! USA! Where any neanderthal can become a billionaire!”

Thanks Citizens United!

UPDATE: This even knocked Limbaugh – who is the best ever at what he does (next to his Liberal counterpart, the late Jerry Williams) - off his game:

“No, I’m not depressed.  No, no, nothing happened.  Look, I know every one of you, some days you just don’t care.  Nothing floats your boat.  Not depressed.  You’re just flatline.  You don’t care.  I’m talking about mood flatline. I’m not talking about heart rate.  Come on, folks, you gotta cut me some slack.  This is like the third day in 23 years I haven’t cared.”

Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history and education at New York University, is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.”

“In our college admissions process, especially, we punish Asian Americans who hew too closely to the stereotype. Rather than rewarding students for their individual effort and achievement, we effectively penalize them for doing so well as a group. The Education Department is currently investigating a complaint against Harvard, for allegedly discriminating against Asian Americans in admissions. It’s not sufficient to earn near-perfect grades and test scores, or to excel at a musical instrument, or to win a science-fair contest. Asian American applicants do all those things, in droves. But our elite universities don’t want too much of a good thing, if it all comes from the same racial group.” ~Read Zimmerman’s opinion in today’s Washington Post

And as Gish Jen notes in today’s New York Time’s piece, Asian Men Can Jump: “As the psychologist Jerome S. Bruner has observed, cultures do offer us templates, but even the simplest culture offers a variety of choices; culture does not determine us. And, as the anthropologist Richard A. Shweder says, culture and psyche make each other up. We shape our templates as much as they shape us.”

I look forward to your letters.