Justice Loses Its Stars and Stripes

By The Prowler on 7.16.10 @ 6:08AM

What's black and white and "red" all over? The Department of Justice's newly designed website. Gone are the standard red, white, and blue motifs, replaced by an all-black backdrop. And prominently placed on virtually every page of the site is a quote credited to a man who facilitated a greater role for socialists and communists at the U.N., and the global "workers rights movement."

The redesigned website was launched without fanfare, but was noticed internally by several career lawyers, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of political reprisals. "We were told that the media team and the senior leadership that signed off on the design thought that the patriotic shtick from the Ashcroft days was a bit much for an agency that isn't supposed to be political," says a DOJ lawyer, who inquired about the redesign. "It was a real effort not to laugh at that."

Prominent now on the site are links to "Justice.gov en EspaƱol" and the "The Recovery Act and the Department of Justice." But most jarring is the quote that is appears on virtually every page of the website. "The common law is the will of mankind issuing from the life of the people," which, some DOJ staff say, is tied to a man who ushered in the socialist and communist theories that now permeate the United Nations.

Another DOJ lawyer says, "It's taken from an inscription along one of the outer walls of the department ["The common law derives from the will of mankind, issuing from the life of the people, framed by mutual confidence, and sanctioned by the light of reason"], but no one is sure where the quote came from."

The quotes that ring the building were selected during the construction process back in the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Some attorneys believed the quote is pulled or adapted from the writing of Sir William Blackstone, the 18th Century British jurist, who wrote the Commentaries on the Laws of England, which influenced not only British law, but also the American constitutional and legal system. But other Department of Justice employees say the quote originates from British lawyer, C. Wilfred Jenks, who back in the late 1930s and after World War II was a leading figure in the "international law" movement, which sought to impose a global, common law, and advocated for global workers rights. Jenks was a long-time member of the United Nation's International Labor Organization, and author of a number of globalist tracts, including a set of essays published back in 1958, entitled The Common Law of Mankind.

Most telling: Jenks, as director of the ILO is credited with putting in place the first Soviet senior member of the UN organization, and also with creating an environment that allowed the ILO to give "observer status" to the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and to issue anti-Israeli statements, which precipitated efforts by the U.S. Congress to withdraw U.S. membership from the ILO. The U.S. actually did withdraw in the mid-1970s due to the organization's leftist leanings.

"It was Jenks's efforts that helped make the ILO a tool of the socialist and communist movement," says one of the DOJ lawyers. "We used to joke about how fitting it was that this was Janet Reno's favorite quote to use in speeches, and now the Obama folks think it encapsulates out department's mission."

Suggestions to highlight quotes from the U.S. Constitution or Bill of Rights or quotes from the Founders, the Federalist Papers or prominent American jurists were quickly shot down by the Department of Justice's media and new media teams, according to DOJ sources familiar with the design process, and the White House communications shop was given input to the overall design as well.

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/1 ... bal-justic