It’s worth noting that the guy you quoted there who was speaking about the nobility of the quotation’s sentiments is the guy who came up with the term “partial-birth abortion,” co-managed the impeachment proceedings for Bill Clinton, and served as an attorney to Jeb Bush.
nitpick: Blackstone.
Nametag is right that its pretty unlikely that Jenkins was the source of the quote, as he was only 26 when it was put on the DoJ, while Blackstone was a famed legal thinker specifically associated with Common Law principles, and of whom there was already a statue in DC put up in the previous decade.
So within the space of a few posts we learn that this latest conservative manufactured outrage is a load of crap. I’m amazed.
Even though it’s rubbish you just know Fox News will get a few news cycles out of it.
Nice one.
I think the OP should be on the lookout for subliminal messages (marxism is great) in various websites and messageboards. (Obama is the messiah) Only by doing this will he be able to uncover who is behind all this (Satan)
Sometimes ya just gotta throw yourself on the grenade.
And, as I point out, the article is more intellectually honest than all the cloned internet sites that explicitly claim Jenks as the author.
Don you’re new here. You can be forgiven. You might want to consider a credible source next time. Perhaps even provide a real link for folks to use. You know, like this —> http://www.justice.gov/
Somehow I don’t see how a simple web site upgrade to a standardized approach for top level government agencies can be misconstrued as some hidden political meaning. Then again, there is FauxNoise leading your charge.
BTW, the site is not black and white. The top banner has an color value of rgb(36, 36, 36). Black has a RGB value of rgb(0, 0, 0). The page content background color is rgb(254, 253, 249) and not white, which has a value of rgb(255, 255, 255). Yeah, I know I’m being a bit nit picky. But, you see, we kinda relish on accuracy 'round these parts and you kinda got off on the wrong foot with FauxNoise, only to go downhill after that.
You might want to pick up a program. It’s over there to your left, between the stacked Bibles and stacked Korans.
Ya know, now that I actually look at the website, I don’t really care for it. Not for political reasons, I just don’t think it looks very nice.
Its the Hammer and Sickle watermarks, they make the text hard to read.
I was just about to make those points myself, Duckster
It looks very classy and also very modern. It’s not stark black & white but shades of dark grey with an off-white background and gold accents. Here’s the Attorney General’s page:
http://www.justice.gov/ag/
You can see they brought a bit of the gold into a sort of parchment border at the top. It looks very lawyerly and extremely professional. Elegant, even.
By contrast, here’s the old website, according to the Wayback Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080708201613/http://www.justice.gov/
The old one looks like a newsletter put up by someone’s kid for a school html project. It’s cluttered, it’s ugly, it’s frankly amateurish.
There’s no question which version looks more appropriate for the highest Justice Department in our government.
Well, my gibberish can be easily backed up as far as you are concerned. The law by itself did not prevent any thing, and neither to this date. It was the teeth in the law that made the difference. Many knew it was wrong to take slaves and openly spoke about it. It was the idea that all men are created equal before God, and there was little doubt that blacks were as human as any. It was the open “concept” or the Humanist Philosophy that inspired the words in constitution; life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness were valid goals along with love your neighbor as yourself clearly pointed the way NOT to take slaves. Accordingly the USA would have been better off never to have a black slave in this country and left the blacks in Africa.
The right path was easily seen, teeth needed to be shown and used to back it up. Hence a massive civil war where almost a million whites were killed. And for the next 50 years history shows the blacks were worse off than being slaves. Then common law still was not finished until clarity of the civil rights act that had even more teeth.
The philosophy was right on and clearly expressed in common law from the start and Europe was way ahead of the USA in banning slavery. The philosophy of humanism sprang from the bible NT around the 15th century that was a cause of the Catholic Church break up that had violations of human rights all over the place, along with the kings. In European courts the foundation of torts was laid down in the late 15 hundreds, of what we still draw on today as Stare Deisis, to stand by things decided.
The common law is good, and in basics not much has changed in the last 500 years only greater application, expansion, and clarification. Punishments have changed more because chopping off ears for petty crimes became brutal, and the object was more to “teach” than to crucify.
As sex goes in marriage the basic principles apply, you do not want to be forced into sex and in pain and disgrace so do not force others; love others as yourself. Marriage was a civil contract, that if broken there is a penalty where the children must be taken care of first. As without children it took no brains to know humanity would not exist. Common law applied perfectly as a hand in a glove in the situation. Justice could be swift with the surety of fair play to all, that even the common man could agree with and understand.
That is the beauty of common law and the philosophy to back it up. You do not need volumes of books itemizing every one of the million offenses as needed in statutes. In this manor, by philosophical application, every situation could be covered in common law just by using the basic principles.
Since common law conception going back to the start of humanity it has never been broken, not at any time. Common law has just gotten better with use.
There is a right way for men to organize themselves to get the best results for the individual and for society at large, and common laws are it. The will of the people can be horribly wrong as in slavery, but common laws prevailed because they are RIGHT.
Common law is the glue that holds society together and nothing more.
It is total stupidity that if the will of the people is to commit random murders is some how “beneficial to society” is just nonsense. It takes brains to use common laws effectively, and what can I say other than liberals do not have much brains.
Don
Yes, because I’m sure Obama himself designed the Web site.
Basically this is just another bullshit controversy designed to get Fox’s viewership riled up. If I were a press officer at the Justice Department and someone from Fox called me to get a comment about this, I’d just roll my eyes and lambaste them for wasting my time.
I love it when you use the Random Legal Jargon generator. It’s so fun!
In case any facts can enter your crack-addled brain, I’ll note that the Common Law legal system is not in use in Europe. All European nations, with the exception of England, use a Civil Law system in which laws are exhaustively codified and prior precedent has no particular legal significance. Nor is there a great distinction between crime and tort.
It gives me some level of satisfaction that there is apparently nothing of substance wrong with the Obama administration.
First they re-designed our webpages, and I said nothing…
Life, liberty, etc. is from the Declaration of Independence.
And don’t evade the important questions here, Don; I specifically asked you about fonts.
Rants–even particularly dumb rants posted as jokes–belong in The BBQ Pit, not Great Debates.
Off you go.
[ /Moderating ]
I believe you are correct to a degree on the European nations, however the codifications of laws were taken from torts, as I said earlier. First came the torts or common law, then came the codes and statutes. Mostly this has to do with criminal laws, at least that is my focus. There is a good reason for this. If you notice in the USA in criminal law where statutes apply it is State v. Son of Sam or State v. BP. The private person does not have the ways and means to take on large corporations or to do extensive criminal investigations.
In the USA if there is a wrong not covered by statutes the state can apply tort laws with the same effect.
This does not mean a citizen cannot seek relief from a wrong on their own in civil court, it simply means that the state (or federal government) is going to fight your battles. This is better for society at large as you can keep making money as the trial continues in your benefit, gives confidence in the society that justice will prevail and perhaps the common citizen with get his moneys worth for the taxes he pays. This also preserves the authority from the top down, brings stability to the country at large by preventing mob rule and warring fractions.
This makes the country safer for economic and technical progress where your energies do not have to spend guarding your house day and night.
However in the long run statutes and codes get over bearing for length, as not every situation that humans get into can be covered in detail as is required in modern law. Also when the common person ask why does the law cover this action it is not enough to say it is written is a book, or the King says so. Torts have the burden to be “explained” to the public in an open trial to show guilt beyond a resonable doubt, so the good reasoning can be explored, possibly improved on, and then digested to become a personal moral code, rather than being a blind ding bat. It is not enough just to keep the law, it is important to know why the law exist and what the law is to accomplish, and what the benefits are other than staying out of prison.
In the west we are stuck on this education thingy, that the more educated people are the less crimes will be committed. We are working on it.
Saying the will of the people make the laws, is like saying the mob rules. People have to be controlled and directed with the finest and highest laws so the state and society can prosper the best and we build on what we KNOW and is proven that works.
Don
Common law is only as good as the line of cases that establish it on a particular point of law. Why you’re deifying it is unclear. Particularly since volumes of books or online archives are still needed, even under the otherwise common law system of the US, for state statutes, federal statutes, or federal regulations. In general, though, common law trades civil law all the shelves of codified laws with all the shelves of collected court decisions contained in the state, federal, and Supreme Court reporters. And every situation cannot be covered by or through common law - that’s why there is the phrase for “case of first impression.”
You are completely off your nut. Common law does not go back to the “start of humanity,” whenever that was.
Once again, you don’t seem to even understand that common law is a system and it is value-neutral with regards to the cases that comprise it on a particular point of law.
Hoo Crap! The AG looks just like The Obama Lama except with a moustache and blonder hair! No wonder dude looks so damned tired all the time, he’s doing both jobs!
Don123–go take your pills.
And have a quiet lie-down, in a dark place, with a moist towel over your eyes.
Like the doctor told you to.
I feel certain these strange spells of yours shall pass.
Cheer up : even in that case, it could have been Papyrus.