The professor is Jonathan Turley of George Washington University who College Insurrection readers may remember from a previous post.

Hat tip to Allahpundit of Hot Air.

Linda Feldmann of the Christian Science Monitor reports.

Is Barack Obama an imperial president?

In their use of executive orders, Bush and Obama are virtually tied: In his first five years in office, Bush issued 165 orders, versus 167 by Obama. But a bean-counting approach doesn’t capture the scope of a president’s approach to executive power.

“It’s really the character of the actions, and their subject,” says Jonathan Turley, a constitutional scholar at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. “In my view, Obama has surpassed George W. Bush in the level of circumvention of Congress and the assertion of excessive presidential power. I don’t think it’s a close question.”…

“Obama’s not interpreting the law; he’s changing the law,” says Mr. Turley. “He’s changing deadlines that were the subject of intense legislative debate.”

The Obama administration also did an about-face on the requirement that members of Congress and their staff get their health insurance via the government exchanges, without the government subsidy they were receiving under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Under the ACA, they would not have been eligible for subsidies – leading to fears of a brain drain from Capitol Hill…

Looking across the landscape of Obama’s bold record of executive action, Turley of George Washington University doesn’t mince words.

“President Obama meets every definition of an imperial presidency,” says Turley, who notes that he voted for Obama. “He is the president that Richard Nixon always wanted to be.”