| Characterizing Turley as “biased” and “right conservative” is pretty disingenuous. A few years ago I would have called him a pretty standard Hacker News liberal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Turley > In appearances on Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachel Maddow Show, he called for criminal prosecution of Bush administration officials for war crimes, including torture.[21] > He has opined that the Supreme Court is injecting itself into partisan politics.[29] He frequently has expressed the view that recent nominees to the court hold extreme views.[30] > Turley described U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in an op-ed as President Barack Obama's sin-eater, writing: > “For Obama, there has been no better sin eater than Holder. When the president promised CIA employees early in his first term that they would not be investigated for torture, it was the attorney general who shielded officials from prosecution. When the Obama administration decided it would expand secret and warrantless surveillance, it was Holder who justified it. When the president wanted the authority to kill any American he deemed a threat without charge or trial, it was Holder who went public to announce the ‘kill list’ policy.” I think it’s more accurate to say Turley is a libertarian-leaning liberal in a party that’s closed ranks around its statist wing and thrown its libertarians completely under the bus. (And I say that as a statist who didn’t agree with Turley back then!) |
I'm not sure I remember any time during my adult life where the Democratic party had a libertarian wing. I'm curious what you think are examples of libertarian Democrats. People like Feingold and Wyden get cited here because they're ardent about conventionally-construed civil liberties, but that's just a small part of what a libertarian is.