Obama-haters these days seem to find evidence everywhere of socialism creeping into the federal government. The latest outrage: the Department of Justice’s new website. DOJ recently scrapped the old Bush-era stars and stripes website banner in favor of a more somber look, prompting lots of online conservative angst about the Obama administration’s lack of patriotism. But it wasn’t just the flag replacement that has conservatives atwitter. It’s the quote that now graces the top of the page, which says, “The common law is the will of mankind issuing from the life of the people.”
The quote is also inscribed on the DOJ’s headquarters in DC, but according to administration critics, it’s a sign of just how serious Obama is about spreading Marxism in America. While no one seems to know for sure where the quote comes from, some believe the source to be C. Wilfred Jenks, the head of the United Nation’s International Labour Organization in the 1930s and a leading member of the “international law” movement. The American Spectator, which first alerted the blogosphere to the change, insists that Jenks helped make the ILO a tool of the communist movement and, “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.”
What’s most interesting about the Spectator article is the many anonymous quotes attributed to DOJ staffers, who have nothing good to say about their employer and the new website. One tells the Spectator, ““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. It was a real effort not to laugh at that.” The internal sniping suggests that despite some efforts by Attorney General Eric Holder to re-professionalize the department, it is still full of Bush-era political hacks who burrowed their way into the bureaucracy where civil service rules make it difficult to remove them.
