The Philippine Media and Supreme Court may soon make history by proclaiming a Principle of PRIOR RESTRAINT against the POLICE. The Petition by journalists for a Writ of Prohibition against top govt officials takes especial umbrage at the following rage-bait from Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez...

“DOJ ADVISORY

PLEASE BE REMINDED THAT YOUR RESPECTIVE COMPANIES, NETWORKS OR ORGANIZATIONS MAY INCUR CRIMINAL LIABILITIES UNDER THE LAW, IF ANYONE OF YOUR FIELD REPORTERS, NEWS GATHERERS, PHOTOGRAPHERS, CAMERAMEN AND OTHER JOURNALISTS WILL DISOBEY LAWFUL ORDERS FROM DULY AUTHORIZED GOVERNMENT OFFICERS AND PERSONNEL DURING EMERGENCIES WHICH MAY LEAD TO COLLATERAL DAMAGE TO PROPERTIES AND CIVILIAN CASUALTIES IN CASE OF AUTHORIZED POLICE OR MILITARY OPERATIONS.

They pray the Court "prohibit the enforcement" of the above advisory, thus giving journalists a virtual carte blanche to disobey lawful orders during authorized police or military operations. They want to be declared ABOVE THE LAW because they supposedly have Press Freedom. Ano, sinusuerte sila? This is not a serious legal case, but both Media and Supreme Court are determined and destined to make beautiful headlines together. Isn't that obvious?

In my opinion Manila Pen was an issue akin to that of Crowd Control. When a given situation is declared to be a crime scene by the Police, it is the legal and moral obligation of all citizens to comply with any reasonable police requests, orders or ultimata [sic!], even if they happen to be journalists. It is hardly any suppression of Press Freedom for the press to cover events from say 100 meters away instead of having to be 1 meter away from the blazing guns and swirling tear gas! Of course all the Sturm und Drang whipped up by the Press has obscured this central issue, that by disobeying the police's instructions on that day, the press unnecessarily endangered life and limb, not only theirs, but the police.

Upon close inspection the advisory merely declares the intention of the authorities to enforce the laws of the land relevant to situations like the Manila Pen standoff, in which Mass Media and Civilians with no clear chain of command and control created a complex and dangerous situation that was miraculously resolved peaceably. But it ended with the assailed arrests of some 50 media personalities who refused to vacate the hotel even after three police ultimata. Now it's them that claim aggrievement. The Public has turned a cold shoulder.

It was not our Right to Know that was endangered at the Manila Pen. It was the Right to Life, primarily of the police who did not know what they were facing in Trillanes' Little Trap at the Manila Pen. The Journalists who stayed endangered not only their lives but also that of the police. I do believe more journalists obeyed the police than disobeyed them.

THE PRIORITY OF LIBERTIES The rights of Journalism, as organized Free Speech, are actually the rights of commerce. Journalism is the right to freely buy and sell information of all kinds (”Speech”). A newspaper, tv or radio station is first and foremost a commercial enterprise for profit. Although the marketing hype usually invokes such things as serving the public’s right to know, it cannot be denied that 80% of media income comes from selling telecomm load and peddling movie tsismis. A nilpotent amount of journalism goes to such lofty activities as fueling corrupt uprisings to overthrow popular Presidents, though such sensational crusading is essential to the success of the enterprise.

Consider: a Waiter, a Journalist and a Cop.

Whose job is it to serve the famous Manila Pen halo-halo and satisfy our right to pursue happiness?

Whose job is it to report on the news event and thus satisfy our right to know by exercising the Liberty called Press Freedom?

Whose job is it to protect everyone’s Right to Life by upholding the Law and preserving public peace and order?

The Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, in that lexical order, are truths self-evident (since 1776).

But it is their PRIORITY as revealed to us by common sense that some journalists ignore.

The Right to Life of cops is most in danger of being violated by rebels and putschists. But the reason Waiters and Journalists morally ought to accept the priority of the cops doing their job rests in that ranking of rights and duties.

Freedom is a compound whose elements are rights and duties.

The duty with higher priority is the one whose corresponding right is has a higher lexical order.

Thus, although the waiter has the right to serve halo-halo, he cannot insist upon exercising it if the cops say they have a job to do involving public order and security!

The right to life trumps the right to serve happiness in a glass of Manila Pen halo halo.

Likewise the right to life (of everyone, not just the cops) trumps the right to find stuff out and sell sensational news.

WHY ARE SCOOPS IMPORTANT? Being so lucrative, journalism is a competitive industry. The need for scoops in Journalism is like the need of our shabu-addicted bus drivers on EDSA to "scoop up" passengers before the Other Guy does. Since most of the inside pages off prime time material is mundane and boring, all media needs the Front Pages and Prime Time News to have sensational eye popping news and views. Without such colorful packaging and gaudy wrappers and spicy calumnies, where would our brand of Fast Food Journalism be?

COGNOS UBER ALLES: Still there is a school of thought which believes that the Right to Know has the highest possible priority because of the honored place it holds in our Constitution and democratic traditions.

Section 4. No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.

However, the absolutist interpretation of this provision favored by today's petitioners, does not sustain any vitality when one contemplates the dire abridgements of broadcast media's freedoms glaringly self-evident in their Franchise Agreements with Congress, abridgements they have willingly accepted in exchange for the lucrative privilege of commercially exploitating the electromagnetic spectrum.

Naturally, Hammers are determined to protect their right to drive Nails into hard surfaces. And there can be no possible ceiling to the altitudes of eloquence reached by the press freedom fighters of our day and age in its defense and their right to take the offensive on any and all Public Figures.

The job of journalists is deemed to be so noble and essential to the well-being of the masses that ANY interference by the Police -- such as daring to stop a bunch of rebel putschists from acting out "Edsa Next" at a luxury Makati hotel is tantamount to abridging the Freedom of the Press and detrimental to the Public's Right to Know.

Here is Maria Ressa's Statement upon filing the Petition today...

"We Have Press Freedom or We Don’t. There is No Middle Ground."

Statement delivered by Maria Ressa before the press conference on the filing of a Petition for a Writ of Prohibition before the Supreme Court 28 January 2008, Manila

Last week, 11 of our colleagues went to the Supreme Court to question the legality of their arrests after the Manila Peninsula siege and to ask for reprieve from the repeated threats and attempts to harass and intimidate journalists. Today, almost a hundred journalists from more than 15 media organizations join them. Some of us were among those arrested, without the benefit of a warrant – the largest number of journalists arrested by a democratic government while reporting on a political conflict. For those of us who were not arrested, we are just as affected by recent moves which we unanimously believe are designed to limit press freedom.

The line has been moved. For each of us, it would be easier to pretend we didn’t notice, but we know that if we do nothing, we help destroy press freedom. That is why we came to the Supreme Court today.

We take this action because we cannot allow press freedom to be confined to narrow physical bounds and narrowly interpreted principles, conveniently defined by those in authority to serve the political interests of the moment.

This is a good time to review the government policy on press freedom – after Proclamation 1017 in 2006, the arrests of more than 50 journalists after the Manila Peninsula siege last year and the continuing intimidation, threats, and warnings issued by government authorities in recent weeks and days. This is the reason why we, as journalists, have come forward to present our cases.

We reject any suggestion that we are resorting to “trial by publicity.” We are taking the legal high road because we believe we either have press freedom or we don’t. There is no middle ground.

The individual stories of the petitioners and plaintiffs in the cases filed today provide compelling facts that need to be presented before the scrutiny of the courts of the land in the interest of truth and justice. Our objective is not just relief, but for the Supreme Court to help us correct the current situation where, we believe, press freedom is being constantly redefined and constrained.

Our petition before the Supreme Court explains our reasons, and I quote:
“The arrests of the journalists who covered the hotel siege; the threats, warnings and “reminders” of re-arrest and/or criminal liability; the public denunciation of the press as coddlers of military rebels; and the treatment of the press as combatants are unconstitutional because they unduly restrict petitioners’ rights to free speech and expression, vitiate the freedom of the press, and prevent the exercise of the people’s constitutional right to information on matters of public concern.”

If our country is to remain the democracy we reclaimed in 1986, then, we, as journalists, should be allowed to exercise our professions, reporting events as they happen, when they happen. By submitting ourselves to the courts, we show our faith in the institutions of the State, regardless of how we have been treated by some of its officials.

Ultimately, the decision that will be handed down by our courts will influence the future of democracy in our country.

In the end, our democracy is only as good as we make it. The existence of democratic institutions - a separate legislature, an independent Judiciary - a Constitutional guarantee of free expression, and a free press, do not themselves guarantee a democracy. They only make democracy possible. Making it a reality depends on the men and women who make it work.

Our action today is media’s contribution to democracy in our country. This is our commitment to upholding it and making it work for our people.

Wow! What a perfectly hyperbolic piece of emotional blackmail!

PRAISED BY THE ACCUSED!

The newspaper which has been slapped with literally THOUSANDS of criminal libel law suits in its relatively short 20 year career as the Philippine Daily Innuendo, and has hundreds of active cases today calls the Libel Laws "a tool for repression!" The editorial gives fulsome praise to Mr. Chief Justice Reynato Puno's latest circular (PDF) virtually PREJUDGING those cases in favor of the Accused. By limiting any possible punishment to fines for the Media Mavens and Moguls that are on the dock in hundreds of still active and unresolved cases, the Supreme Court really has USURPED Congress as it did in 2001 by issuing an unethical mass advisory opinion. It's a culpable violation of the Constitution, and an impeachable offense, in my humble opinion, but the High Court has already peed all over the only Constitutional process by which they themselves can be held to Public Accountability, the impeachment process. Now with the help of Media, they will complete the legal cuckolding of the Congress by unelected Judges in Black Robes.

Although we are obliged to defend PDI's right to Press Freedom, we also have Freedom of Speech so, "Har dee har har!" While the swinging door of observation is momentarily ajar, let us see what mental illness has seized some in the Media and why they are really buttering up the Supreme Court with promises of undying glory and praise in its Front Pages yet to be...

Every Freedom is a compound composed of two basic elements: Rights and a Duties.

The Rights to Life, Liberty and the various pursuits of happiness, are well known. But what are the corresponding Duties? The answer lies in the Principle of Equal Liberty for each citizen. I think that in general the Duty that corresponds to any given democratic Right is the obligation to defend that same Right in others whenever we decide to exercise a given Freedom.

The Right to Life always comes with the Duty to defend an equal "freedom from unjust death" in others as much as for ourselves. The principle of self-defense is a natural derivative.

So too, with "Liberty" and "Pursuit of Happiness". We cannot enjoy these freedoms unless we recognize, as a matter of Social Contract and Common Sense, that an equal right to them exists in others. The preternatural assumption of a Constitutional Democracy, as a Social Contract, is that those who are agreeing to be bound by its provisions, do not know, a priori, what their social class, economic status, political position or personal circumstances are going to be in History. So that in choosing the basic principles that are to govern their association as a society, they are forced to choose principles based solely on the Principle of Equal Liberty for all.

Let us take Press Freedom. Journalism is really an organized, commercialized form of free speech, a freedom of assembly as it were, which includes and relies upon commercial rights to survive buying and selling information--all kinds of information. Thus Press Freedom covers not only the freedom to report the news, it is also the right to sell telecomm load.

The Right to Liberty is an omnibus right to an expandable list of freedoms that human societies specifically recognize as the Bill of Rights. The duty that attaches to each one is specific to that right, but all are governed by: "My Liberty Is Your Liberty!" whenever controversies arise among individuals and institutions.

What the media has now lost sight of is Father Joaquin Bernas' dictum that journalists do not have "more" freedom of speech than ordinary citizens, so that in matters of public security andorder, they should accept lawful authority and not prop themselves up above the law by standing on the shoulders of their Sacred Cow. My critique of the Mass Media in the Manila Pen controversy is based on this Principle of Equal Liberty when it comes to Freedom of Speech.

The latest escalation in the Radical Media's War on the Cops is getting a usual noisy send off over at Ellen Tordesillas blog, where I've been hanging around this week adding to the general atmosphere of Sturm und Drang.

Via Washington Post, this is the Victory Speech of Senator Barack Obama after taking the South Carolina primary 55% to 27% against Hillary Clinton and John Edwards (19%).

I think this makes the race on the Democratic side much more interesting, and gives Republicans a lot to think about in the coming months.

Who would they rather run against? And what if Hillary and Obama run together? What if they don't!

hen will we ever learn?
There is no way of reading the 1987 Constitution's Article XI (Accountability of Public Officers) without being dumbstruck at the realization that even the mighty Supreme Court's judicial powers are reduced to NIL in ALL cases of impeachment. Here we see the Separation of Powers principle at work. The Congress has the sole and exclusive power under the Constitution to initiate, try and decide with finality ALL cases of impeachment. Although it is a power exercised by the Political Branch of the Govt, impeachment is essentially a judicial power given to the Legislature, an important piece of the Judiciary's power that is taken away from them and entirely given to the Congress.

The Supreme Court has absolutely zero jurisdiction in all matters involving impeachment. And of course that only makes sense since the Judiciary has the largest number of IMPEACHABLE public officers with 15 Justices, followed by Comelec with 7; the Commission on Audit and Civil Service each with 3; the President, Vice President and Ombudsman. The Congress has NO impeachable public officials. That is why it is to the Political Branch of the Government that the Judicial power is given over the removal from office of this very select group.

History's vast audience already sees how the Supreme Court usurped the JUDICIAL powers of the Senate in 2001 and thus was able to overthrow a popularly elected President after Davide single handedly aborted Erap's acquittal at impeachment trial. Our democracy is still reeling from that usurpation and now they are at it again. This time they want to steal the LEGISLATIVE powers of Congress. The High Court has issued an ADVISORY OPINION on cases of Libel, telling judges to only give fines not prison sentences -- something that is just not done by Supreme Courts with any sense of impartiality, wisdom and honor.

But this takes the cake: Chief Justice Reynato Puno says that he is willing to be impeached for issuing this circular on Libel, since he is only defending our human rights. Oh no! Another Davide in the making? Another crazed Bible toting utilitarian moralist at the helm?

The Supreme Court of the Philippines is like a demented Grandfather who who has stolen the keys to the family car and and is starting to take it out on wild joy rides. Again. It's our own fault of course, for not taking away those Keys in 2001 after the same Crazy Old Man grabbed the Wheel from the Senate and usurped the Congress' sole and exclusive Driver's License in all cases of impeachment. The High Court threw Joseph Estrada out of the Car and put Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in the Driver's seat. To accomplish that feat, the Supreme Court in March 2001 had to utterly destroy the Wall of Separation between the Congress and the Judiciary in an historic case of presidential impeachment and trial. It is a FACT never mentioned by Edsa Dos Die Hards, that the power to try ALL cases of impeachment lies exclusively, entirely, and with finality in the Senate. That this exclusive power was USURPED by Hilario Davide and the 2001 judges is a festering and open wound. More than that, it has become a bad habit with the Court to exercise Unelected Judges People Power.

While the Nice People's Army and its crypto-supporters would like us to believe that the Government is engaged in a spree of extajudicial killings against leftist activists and journalists, please note that the person just arrested with and charged for the murder of Davao's Fernando "Batman" Lintuan is another media man in the same radio station!

Ricky Carandang has the ominous sounds of JDV's speakership creaking, in The Night of the Long Knives. Gloria telephoned specifically to call it off.

The Equalizer has a picture pretty postcard of the BURJ AL ARAB short time motel that the President is staying in whilst visiting Arabie (for up to $10,000 a night!)

Speaking of purty pictures, Senor Enrique (2007 Best Photography Blog Award)
covers the YKL Photo gigue at Glorietta (they've cleaned out the Basement, promise!)

John Marzan is unhappy because the new Comelec chairman is 75 years old. Dick Gordon's motto could be relevant: "What we need is not a change OF men, but a change IN men. In the case of our election system, we need a change in the system.

Manila Bulletin Online reports on the nearly $20 million donation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the International Rice Research Institute.

Patricia Evangelista manages to write a really lengthy summary of the Manila Pen Standoff without once mentioning Senator Sonny Trillanes and Capt. Danilo Lim, or the Arrest Warrants that the police were trying to serve on them for criminal contempt of Court. She is mastering the genre of journalism that deftly changes the subject and turns the tables on the authorities by invoking the victimological card: we are being oppressed by fascists. Ah, Youth is SO wasted on the Young, when talent serves not the heart but the tongue. Media made themselves the story -- now who's sorry?

The NDF demands, and the Church nods it's sheepish, tonsured head up and down, that the govt should resume peace talks without preconditions (except of course for their own demand that the Philippines first have them removed from the US and EU lists of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. They also consider it an unreasonable "precondition" that both sides cease firing guns at each other before holding peace talks. ARMED peace talks--that's the demand of Joma and his side-kicks, the ex-priest and ex-nun all living together in the Utrecht Space Station getting fat on Dutch Welfare.

Have a listen to Ellen Tordesillas and Maria Ressa talking to Cheche Lazaro about the Manila Pen incident in Part One of Media in Focus Thursday evening.

FM-Quality MP3

In Part Two, professional polemicists Luis Teodoro and Vergel Oh Santos took turns tag team wrestling Col. Nicanor Bartolome of the Philippine National Police, who surprisingly held his own and scored some good points by just saying it like it is.

FM-Quality MP3

I think Ms. Lazaro asked all the tough questions with a feather touch that elicited responses from her guests deserving to be Internet Archived. (Also the Senate hearings on the matter).

JOURNALISM AND THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE Here is one of the most basic facts of Nature that Man discovered in the 20th Century. In the material world, we cannot make physical observations of even a single atom without somehow perturbing and thus confounding its position and motion. The gravity of our mere presence, or the photons by which we can see it, or sound waves to communicate with it, all have some unavoidable physical effect. The mathematical description is called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, but it's simple physical gist is that there is literally and physically no truly unobtrusive act of observation. No one can stand outside of Reality and have an omniscient view that affects nothing else. The Observer cannot avoid having a physical effect on the Observed. This is a Law of Nature that has passed every known physical test designed by the smartest people in the world to disprove it. Strangely enough, it actually agrees with "common sense."

But of course we don't need Quantum Mechanics to tell us that the same thing probably applies to Cops and Robbers, Reporters and Rebels, Photographers and Celebrity Senators, broadcast journalists and the real, physical events they cover, like standoffs at luxury hotels and attempted coup d'etats.

OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE The important question here is whether or not Manila Pen had become a CRIME SCENE, over which most reasonable citizens would insist that the Police have lawful and moral authority and ought to be obeyed even by Journalists. Lost in all the covering fire of the last few weeks however, is the simple fact that the Police were trying to serve ARREST WARRANTS for Contempt of Court on Sonny Trillanes and Danilo Lim for brazenly walking out of their scheduled hearing that day. They happened to be escorted by their armed guards and a troupe of journalists, photographers and reporters, as well as several civilian supporters. Trillanes sensed that he could pull off a Publicity Stunt and did, with the willing compliance of the media, who in varying degrees played along with him.

WHY DID THE JOURNALISTS BECOME THE STORY? I believe that once the Police had given even the first "ultimatum" for everyone to vacate the scene because they wanted to serve the Warrants, anyone left there after a reasonable period of time, would have to be treated either as SUSPECTS or MATERIAL WITNESSES, whether they were the rebels, the media employees or the waiters and hotel employees. I think the Mass Media unethically made themselves a part of the story when they decided to disobey lawful authorities who were practically begging them to leave because the Armored Personnel Carrier was coming with its 50 caliber machine gun!

It is the height of intellectual dishonesty to claim that Mass Media did not get in the way of the police on that day. They did, and they know it, but they can't admit it because that would reveal how wrong they were to stay. How guilty they were of OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE!

It was entirely moral and legal and reasonable, in my opinion for the police to detain everyone and conduct a thorough investigation of all there present. Last I checked they could be detained with no charges for 36 hours. They should've been, the spoilt brats! The melodramatic description of their arrest that night is belied by video of the media men casually smoking while mugging for photo ops of their upraised wrists tied in plastic restraints. Also a fresh crime occurred at the Manila Pen, aside from criminal contempt. It was the very real flight from Justice of Nick Faeldon, possibly aided and abetted by a "lady reporter," Dana Batnag of Jiji Press.

THE PRIORITY OF LIBERTIES Vergel O. Santos does not recognize the lexical ordering of our basic rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Like Ellen Tordesillas, he seems no longer to recognize the basic government authorities and their right to maintain public order.

While Freedom of Speech is sacred, Organized Journalism's Right to Sell Telecomm Load is not higher than the Right to Life of the police, the waiters, and other innocent bystanders, or the reasonable expectation of the Public that they will maintain public order and security.

The Blog of Ellen Tordesillas is a good place to hang out and watch the fallout while getting a good dose of scream therapy. It's Bedlam over there! My pitiks: one, two, three.

Some people accuse the "rednecks" of the Republican Party of being RACIST and SEXIST. But that's before they discover how Democrats describe each other... More of Bill Clinton on the campaign trail in South Carolina (Hillary is in California!) over at the Drudge Report
NOBEL LAUREATE TONI MORRISON once created a sensation when she called Bill Clinton "the first black President of the United States," saying,

"Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas."

Asked what he thought of this question during the South Carolina Democratic Primary debates with Hillary Clinton, Senator Barack Obama, seemed to agree saying that Bill Clinton certainly has some of the physical characteristics of a black brother...uhmm...he can dance! (As for the rest of his attributes being checked on and verified by her worthy opponent, a game Hillary Clinton suggested that this "could be arranged.") Haha! The gloves have come off and it's become a bare-knuckle fight in South Carolina. Barack Obama again leads Hillary Clinton by double digit margins in media polls among likely South Carolina Democrats. But then again, that's what happened too in New Hampshire, a contest taken by Hillary Clinton, coming from behind. However, the leading Democratic contender has apparently given up on South Carolina and is campaigning in California ahead of the big Super Tuesday race.

Andrew Sullivan, who is solidly in Barack Obama's camp now, complains that Bill Clinton is actually running for a third term, in violation of the 22th amendment, that he is fighting for his share of a conjugal power sharing arrangement that he also had with Hillary in 1996! He agonizes over the idea that Bill and Hillary Clinton will have four terms in power between them.

An interesting question bouncing around the GOP has to be who among the remaining Republican contenders has the best chance against either Obama or Clinton. Head to head simulation surveys indicate that candidate to be JOHN McCAIN. Unfortunately the GOP's core is "suspicious" of him, though Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani have their own imperfections. Mike Huckabee is said to be running out of money and of course Fred Thompson has dropped out.

Maybe it's like 1912: if Barack and Hillary don't run together (in either order), the GOP stands a better than even chance of keeping the White House with McCain, Romney OR Giuliani. But if they do run, say with Hillary for President and Obama for Vice President, Bill could have his third term.

In anticipation of such a Second Clinton Era, The Cunning Linguists at Boing Boing (actually Mark Frauenfelder) supply a charming vocabulary list:

Faunoiphilia (FAW-nay-FIL-ee-uh) - An abnormal desire to watch animals copulate.

Brassirothesauriast (bruh-zeer-oh-thuh-SAW-ree-ast) - A person who collects brassieres or pictures of women wearing them.

Eunoterpsia (YOO-noh-TURP-see-uh) - The doctrine that pursuing sexual pleasure is the goal of life.

Typhlobasia (TIF-luh-BAY-zee-uh) - Kissing with the eyes closed.

Amychesis (AM-i-KEE-sis) - The involuntary act of scratching or clawing your partner in the heat of passion.

Mammaquatia (MAM-uh-KWAY-shee-uh) - The bobbing or jiggling of a woman's breasts when she walks, dances, or exercises.

Ozoamblyrosis (OH-zoh-AM-bli-ROH-sis) - Loss of sexual apetite because your partner has wicked B.O.

Amomaxia (AM-uh-MAX-see-uh) - Love-making in a parked car.

Colpocoquette (KAHL-puh-koh-KET) - A woman who knows she has an attractive bosom, and who makes good use of its allure.

Melolagnia (MEL-uh-LAG-nee-uh) - Amorous feelings inspired by music.

OKE-DOKE!

Barack Obama at Martin Luther King's Church, the Ebenezer Sermon.

Here's a fascinating review of Jonah Goldberg's new bestseller, Liberal Fascism, (via Instapundit).

Broadcast Journalism is a highly regulated industry in the Philippines, starkly distinct from print journalism. Radio, TV and Wireless are also Big Business. You must have a Congressional franchise to operate a radio, television or telecommunications network granting you the legal and commercial privilege of beaming money-making electromagnetic signals into potentially every nook and cranny of the Archipelago. Even straight into implanted nano radios or cellphones of the future! (Strangely enough, you don't need a franchise, if your Mass Medium happens to be mass-murdered trees with toxic ink stains that become half the solid municipal waste stream!)

A typical TV/Radio Broadcast Franchise like the one below for "Interactive Broadcast Media" is pertinent to the current brouhaha over "Press Freedom" triggered by ABSCBN's decision to allow Maria Ressa and Ces Drilon to seek Amparo protection from the Supreme Court. I think this was a big mistake from a legal and public relations standpoint because the limits of Press Freedom for broadcast journalists are explicitly found in their Congressional Franchise.

REPUBLIC ACT NO. 8210
August 05, 1996

AN ACT GRANTING INTERACTIVE BROADCAST MEDIA, INC., A FRANCHISE TO CONSTRUCT, INSTALL, ESTABLISH, OPERATE AND MAINTAIN RADIO AND TELEVISION BROADCASTING STATIONS IN THE PHILIPPINES

SECTION 1. Nature and Scope of Franchise.—
SEC. 2. Manner of Operation of Stations or Facilities.—
SEC. 3. Prior Approval of the National Telecommunications Commission. —
SEC. 4. Responsibility to the Public.—The grantee shall provide adequate public service time to enable the government, through the said broadcasting stations or facilities, to reach the population on important public issues; provide at all times sound and balanced programming; assist in the functions of public information and education; conform to the ethics of honest enterprise; and not use its stations or facilities for the broadcasting of obscene and indecent language, speech, act or scene, or for the dissemination of deliberately false information or willful misrepresentation, to the detriment of the public interest; or to incite, encourage or assist in subversive or treasonable acts.

SEC. 5. Right of Government. - A special right is hereby reserved to the President of the Philippines, in times of war, rebellion, public peril, calamity, emergency, disaster or disturbance of peace and order, to temporarily take over and operate the stations or facilities of the grantee, to temporarily suspend the operation of any station or facility in the interest of public safety, security and public welfare, or to authorize the temporary use and operation thereof by any agency of the government, upon due compensation to the grantee, for the use of said stations or facilities during the period when they shall be so operated. The radio spectrum is a finite resource that is a part of the national patrimony and the use thereof is a privilege conferred upon the grantee by the State and may be withdrawn anytime, after due process.
SEC. 6. Term of Franchise.—
SEC. 7. Acceptance and Compliance.—
SEC. 8. Bond.—
SEC. 9. Tax Provisions.—
SEC. 10. Self-regulation by and Undertaking of Grantee.—The grantee shall not require any previous censorship of any speech, play, act or scene, or other matter to be broadcast from its stations: Provided, That, the grantee, during any broadcast shall cut off from the air the speech, play, act or scene, or other matter being broadcast if the tendency thereof is to propose and/or incite treason, rebellion or sedition; or the language used therein or the theme thereof is indecent or immoral; and willful failure to do so shall constitute a valid cause for the cancellation of this franchise.

SEC. 11. Warranty in Favor of National and Local Governments.—
SEC. 12. Sale, Lease, Transfer, Usufruct, etc.—
SEC. 13. Dispersal of Ownership.—
SEC. 14. General Broadcast Policy Law.— The grantee shall comply with and be subject to the provisions of a general broadcast policy law which Congress may hereafter enact.
SEC. 15. Separability Clause.—
SEC. 16. Repeatability and Nonexclusivity Clause.—
SEC. 17. Reportorial Requirement.—
SEC. 18. Effectivity Clause.—

The People and the Supreme Court itself might see this as a cynical use of the Writ of Amparo, making ABSCBN look like a millionaire checking into the Charity Ward at the public hospital and demanding the promptitude of super-service.

Luckily the Laws of Nature are not as "fascistic" as the Laws of Men...

THE FUTURE NANORADIO BROADCASTING CORPORATION? Lawrence Berkeley Lab Research News reports the successful fabrication of the world's smallest radio receiver consisting of single carbon nanotube MOLECULE:

“A single carbon nanotube molecule serves simultaneously as all essential components of a radio — antenna, tunable band-pass filter, amplifier, and demodulator,” said physicist Alex Zettl, who led the invention of the nanotube radio. “Using carrier waves in the commercially relevant 40-400 MHz range and both frequency and amplitude modulation (FM and AM), we were able to demonstrate successful music and voice reception.”

The website carries a really cool video of the teeny-tiney carbon nanotube (less than a billionth of a meter in diameter, and one millionth of a meter long) viewed through an Electron Microscope, first stationary, then wiggling to and receiving the Star Wars Theme Song.

Sabong Journalism is definitely in the air now that a major escalation has occurred in the word war between Mass Media Celebrities and the President's Men. The usual provocateurs in Holy Journalism's clothing have put the Judiciary on a dangerous collision course with the Executive.

The Supreme Court justices are now being wooed by clever Media folks with a clear promise of everlasting gratitude and the keys to fame and glory, if not high public office, in the Front Pages and Prime Time Newscasts, to use those two legal confections from South America called the Writ of Amparo and the Writ of Habeas Data against their recent tormentors. ("Fascists!")

But there isn't anything magical about these bonbons of rule-making, it turns out, and one soon discovers their potential for abuse and record of corruption in those places that have adopted them.

TIME Magazine Exposes Corrupt Amparo Glut in Mexico

hat will be the future of the Writ of Amparo in the Philippines? You only have to look at the atrocious mess they've created in Mexico, where a huge backlog in amparo cases has made it the Law Breaker's favorite Writ of Delay, as TIME Magazine reports in its December 18 issue. In Mexico the writ of Amparo has been a major money making business for corrupt judges. With a backlog of a million unresolved cases, the Philippine Judiciary needs the Writ of Amparo like a hole in the head. The new "sunrise industry" for judges is getting a mighty big boost from the Manila Pen caper fallout.

ABSCBN television network employees arrested at the Manila Pen last December during Trillanes' mischievous caper, including media heavyweight ABSCBN's Ces Drilon, and nine others, have filed for a Writ of Amparo with the Supreme Court against DILG Sec. Ronnie Puno, Sec. Raul Gonzalez and Police Chief Avelino Razon, demanding that their arrests be declared illegal. But since they've all been released and held but briefly, Serge Apostol is right, the suit should be thrown out for being moot and academic. They also pray that authorities be enjoined from issuing further threats to arrest them if they break the law or disobey lawful orders in emergency situations. Ahem, those are "threats" to enforce the law! Are journalists above the Law? Susmaryosep!

A very curious slip of the tongue came from ABSCBN's Maria Ressa today talking to Tony Velasquez and Twink Macaraeg about the case. Ms. Ressa called the new Rule on Amparo "a new law" that has never been used before in this manner. She described their filing as a "test case for the Supreme Court."

Considering the high profile nature of this case, I really can't see how the Supreme Court can possible discharge its duties in a cold, impartial matter, since there now seems to be a conflict of interest, or at least of amor propio, between our increasingly activistic High Court and the authorities that must deal with threats to the State and public order.

I think this is significant on two counts. First, the Supreme Court is usurping the powers of Congress and wantonly violating the Constitution by creating a Rule of Court that cannot but modify, diminish or increase some body's substantive individual or institutional rights because the Media and the Govt are in a perpertual adversarial state of high polarization and their pending Decision cannot avoid that violation if it is to be substantive itself.

Second, it is becoming clear that with its "innovative writ of amparo" the Supreme Court has opened up a Pandora's Box that could further swamp and paralyze the Judiciary with useless, frivolous or malicious petitions, as well as vastly expand the opportunities for corruption by judges and other officials of the Court system.

Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention the year of that TIME Magazine Dec. 18 exposé. It was 1950!

Chief Justice Reynato Puno delivered a speech on the Writ of Habeas Data recently.

You know what I think about habeas data? It could threaten Press Freedom, Academic Research and the Right to Know. More on this in previous and future posts...

Founding Father Joaquin Bernas, SJ, writes in PDI today about how simple it would be for the Congress to enact Surgical Constitutional Change as a means of achieving peace and solving the Mindanao problem. (Yeah, right!) Never mind that it involves surgically creating a Frankenstein Unitary Federal Republic...

From what I have seen of the conflict in Mindanao and of the efforts to achieve permanent peace in the region, I have become convinced that lasting peace cannot be achieved without some significant changes in the structure of government in Mindanao... In my view, the search for a solution to the Mindanao problem can be approached through this “surgical” method. More specifically the goal can be either a reformulation of the powers that can be given to the Autonomous Region or the formation of a federated state for Mindanao. I believe that a limited constitutional change can be achieved by Congress under the present constitutional provision without disturbing the rest.

If carried out, the Congress could end up establishing a kind of Afghanistan in Mindanao. Call it the Federated State of Bangsamorostan, a kind of State-within-a-State, a single "federated" Islamic theocracy surgically carved out of the unitary Philippine Repubic. But we are assured by the good Father Bernas that such an entity can be achieved "without disturbing the rest."

Hashim Salamat, Eid Kabbalu, Nur Misuari, and the rest of the Dr. Jekylls and Mr. Hydes in Mindanao's liberation front industry must be sharpening up their surgical axes already, while the folks that did Bali are eagerly looking forward to their new Base and Homeland in Mindanao, courtesy of the Philippine Congress and Father Bernas.

See you at Plebiscite time, Father!

To the great human rights advocates sitting in their black robes and silken panties in the Supreme Court of the Philippines, I hope you will note these real cases of EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS even as you turn down the requests of the Anti Terrorism Council for you to implement the mandates of the Human Security Act and establish special courts to try terrorist crimes. Ever heard of the Rule of Law, yer Honors?

The Igorot Blogger (From the Boondocks) has not carried this item as far as I can tell, but there is a surpassingly beautiful painting on that website which I've taken the liberty of retitling with a minor modification in honor of Zennia Aguilan from Sagada, Mountain Province, who died just now from wounds she suffered in a suicide bombing attack by Taliban Al Qaeda terrorists on a five star hotel in Afghanistan last week.

GMA TV NEWS: Relatives and friends describe 31-year-old Zennia P. Aguilan as daring, adventurous, kind-hearted, and bright.

With this attitude, Zennia left her hometown in Sagada, Mountain Province after completing a course on physical therapy in 2004 to work in Taiwan.

Two years later, she moved to Dubai, then to Afghanistan in July last year.

Little did she know that her adventure in Kabul would end her life. Zennia passed away on Tuesday after sustaining serious injuries from explosions when suicide bombers attacked Monday night the only five-star Serena Hotel in the Afghan capital where she worked as a spa supervisor.

Wire reports said at least eight other persons died in the attack.

Shirley Lebeng, Zennia’s cousin residing in Baguio City, described her as modest and a very bright child since her elementary days at the Anglican-run St. Mary’s School in Sagada. “She was good and kind-hearted."

Lebeng said Zennia’s employer, a European who owns Spa Resources International at the Serena Hotel, telephoned the OFW’s mother and assured her of the repatriation of Zennia’s remains as soon as possible.

Herminia Aguilan, Zennia’s mother, is a retired school teacher in Sagada. She appealed to authorities to help bring her body home soon.

People who are calling for all sorts of "employment bans" on OFWs in dangerous places like Afghanistan and Iraq are wrong to urge such SURRENDER to foes of civilization that would just as soon place all women under a bourqa, or under ground, for daring to work in a five star hotel.

Read it all!

ABU SAYYAF STRIKES AGAIN: In the past week of terrorist activity, the Abu Sayyaf in Tawi-tawi, Mindanao killed a Catholic priest, Father Ray Roda of the Oblates of Mary, Immaculate, during a kidnapping attempt. They've taken a teacher in his mission hostage, Omar Taub.

This story is the true continuation of last year's series of MILF/MNLF/ASG atrocities beginning with another kidnapping: that of Italian priest Giancarlo Bossi, and not quite ending in over fifty Philippine Marines and Army personnel getting ambushed, killed and/or beheaded, with Philippine peace processors like Jess Dureza and Gen. Rodolfo Garcia getting in the way of police and military efforts to apprehend these nasty kidnap for ransom and glee cut-throats.

Father Giancarlo Bossi, who was probably ransomed to safety and then spirited out of the country last year, refused to cooperate with authorities in identifying his kidnappers and helping to apprehend them. Hmm, I guess when they find the killers of the Fr. Roda, they ought to note who might be running out of Italian liras and was trying to replenish their stock. Oh all in the name of Bangsamoro people's libertion, of course.

EDSA DOS DIE HARDS are having a Healing Session for the hollowed out carcass of their cherished People Power ideology over at the Philippine Daily Innuendo, starting with an Editorial that announces the new politically correct incantation of what happened on 20 January 2001:

"PDI: "While the second epiphany of people power was not a revolution but a limited and direct democratic action, it is now understood by many to have been devoured at the table of history—that is to say, de-legitimated..."

But what exactly IS direct democracy if not a direct anti-thesis of representative democracy and deserving of delegitimation? I think TIME Magazine called it MOB RULE.

CONSPIRACY THEORY Veteran reporter Anthony Spaeth called it a conspiracy--

Anthony Spaeth (TIME Magazine, Jan. 29, 2001) : The more disturbing, albeit most plausible, theory of what transpired involves a conspiracy. As a macho former movie star, Estrada was held in contempt by Manila's business aristocracy. Mrs. Aquino is from landed gentry. Cardinal Sin has an understandable aversion to a President who boasts of mistresses and illegitimate offspring. In the mid-'80s, the Elite and the Church banded together to help organize Manila's masses against Marcos, a moment of triumph they have never forgotten. The fact that a high percentage of Filipinos loved Estrada was exasperating. Even more inconvenient was his grip on the Senate, which seemed to ensure that he would stay in power. The solution: to bring hundreds of thousands of Filipinos onto Manila's streets. But the Philippine polity is 77 million-strong. Was this a revolution of the Filipino people—or of a few hundred thousand Filipinos prompted by a few hundred powerful individuals?

DAVIDE'S DERELICTION OF DUTY On 20 January 2001, it all boiled down to less than half a dozen powerful individuals, most of whom are in this famous snapshot of the moment when Chief Justice Hilario G. Davide Jr. transformed the Social Contract called the Constitution into a jumble of Biblical fiddlesticks to be arranged and constructed at will "for the common good." Davide's ultimate treachery lies in his establishment of a Constitutional tradition that is rooted in the end justifying the means, a guarantee of results that Justice will always produce a good and moral outcome in every case, even if the justices have to resort to unfair and unjust process! Thus, Davide was willing to ignore the FACT that Joseph Estrada was on impeachment trial at the Senate, in which he was a non-voting Presiding Judge.

But I hope it has become crystal clear that Davide at the Edsa Shrine on that fine Saturday morning seven years ago, had absolutely no legal, moral or juridical business being there whatsoever! In fact, since the massive demonstration ongoing at that location was clearly and indubitably a PARISAN POLITICAL ACTIVITY calling for the resignation and ouster of the incumbent and democratically elected President, Davide's mere presence could be construed as a culpabable violation of the Judicial Code of Conduct which explicitly prohibits such activity by cold, impartial and neutral judges. His clear duty was to reconvene proceed with the Senate Impeachment Trial of Joseph Estrada, starting from the Tuesday previous (January 16) when the Prosecutor Joker Arroyo abandoned his own oath to prosecute Joseph Estrada in the name of the People and their House of Representatives. But Davide did not do that. Instead he did indeed conspire with others to overthrow the President, frustrate and abort the Constitutional process of impeachment, declared Erap "permanently incapacitated just before noon", and against the remonstrations of Justice Cecilia Munoz Palma, proceeded to the Edsa Shrine to swear in Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

For years PDI described Edsa Dos as a "a military backed popular uprising that overthrew a corrupt President." But now that that "corrupt President" has regained not only his liberty but his civil and political rights, and indubitably enjoys the trust and confidence of the overwhelming majority of the masses, there is a touch of real modesty, if not complete candor in downgrading Edsa Dos from People Power Revolution to Military Backed Popular Uprising to Limited and Direct Democratic Action.

Maybe next year they will finally get it right: Edsa Dos was Davide's monumental dereliction of duty--his insane demolition of wall of separation between the Supreme Court and the Congress in the matter of Accountability of Public Officers (Article XI, 1987 Constitution).

The Regime Change that occurred at Edsa Dos was highly anomalous because it was brought about by the direct self-preventable actions of the Chief Justice and subsequent decisions of the Supreme in what was a clear CASE of IMPEACHMENT.


The inexplicable and sudden swearing in of the Vice President by Chief Justice Hilario G. Davide, Jr. came, as far we know, upon his own personal initiative and immoral dereliction of duty, in concert with its beneficiary, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo; with Jaime Cardinal Sin, and most with Pres. Cory Aquino who later confirmed these facts publicly. A later Chief Justice, Artemio V. Panganiban claimed in 2002, in a speech to seminarians, that the idea to swear in GMA in order to force Erap out of office, came from him.

THE SECOND ENVELOPE: The massive demonstrations at the Edsa Shrine which marked Edsa Dos were touched off on Tuesday night, 16 January 2001, after the Senate impeachment court voted 11 to 10 to exclude as evidence, something called the Second Envelope.

When pro-Estrada senators engineered to block the use of potentially incriminating evidence at the impeachment trial, public outrage exploded.

What was in the Second Envelope? The Senate later opened it to discover that it contained a letter from a Mr. Jaime Dichavez claiming ownership of the Jose Velarde accounts and an offer to prove the same. It was evidence, in other words, that was helpful to Erap's Defense.

Speaking of which, Edsa Dos Die Hards never tire of distorting this aspect of that historic trial, but they never make mention of the fact Joseph Estrada never got his day in impeachment court because the Prosecutor Joker Arroyo walked out and First Gent-to-be Mike Arroyo swung into action.

The trial was aborted by Davide before the Defense could begin. He made it moot and academic by swearing in the Vice President

Was that FAIR??

Manuel L. Quezon III, seems to think it might not have been fair but it was GOOD because it prevented violence from marring the hitherto perfect record of Edsa People Power as an ideology of revolution through peaceful if forceful means. But he makes the most curious equivalence between Marcos and Joseph Estrada (which I found unbelievable), perhaps to strengthen a Constitutionally weak argument:

No one has seriously tackled what condition Joseph Ejercito Estrada was in, during the crucial days and hours his government lost the momentum and crumbled. Looking back, it happened quickly. Prior to the point Angelo Reyes convinced the military’s top brass to, as he put it, engage in mutiny, the advantage, in terms of legitimacy and brute force, lay with Estrada. Even when the defections began to gather pace, he knew, somehow, that his greatest ally was time. Up to the morning of the day he fell from power, it seemed quite possible he could counter-attack by summoning reinforcements from the provinces.

Being the dipsomaniac that he was, there is no high level mystery as to the "condition of Joseph Estrada" in his last hours at the Palace, and the published diary of Ed Angara gives further hints. But I think MLQ3 misses the obvious point that Angara must have been assuring him that the Senate would restart the Impeachment Trial, proceed to a verdict of certain acquittal, and that would be the end of it after a few more days of noisy demonstrations at the Edsa Shrine. Trying to make Erap seem capable of "counter attack" with "reinforcements from the provinces" I find singularly unconvincing and a bit of a stretcher on MLQ's part. Erap was never a fascistic or authoritarian president.

What Erap did not count on was that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Hilario G. Davide would usurp the sole and exclusive powers of the Congress to initiate all cases of impeachment, and to fairly try and remove from office or acquit such high Constitutional officers as the president. It is a little known fact that the verdict in a Senate impeachment trial can NOT be appealed to the Supreme Court, which has zero jurisdiction in all cases of impeachment.

Less than four days after it had become crystal clear that Joseph Estrada had eleven Senators ready to acquit him at the Senate Impeachment Trial, the Supreme Court wants History to believe that he validly RESIGNED the presidency, without anyone actually knowing about it for two months, not even Erap!

I believe the vast audience of History won't be fooled. Joseph Estrada was illegally removed from Office by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in the most stunning malfeasance of Constitutionalism imaginable.

Davide nullified the Senator Judges verdict even before they could render it, even before Erap could mount his defense in Court.

In retrospect, perhaps Rene Saguisag made a mistake in suing Gloria Macapagal Arroyo after Edsa Dos, since she was just the recipient of Stolen Goods. The true thief of constitutionalism and electoral democracy at Edsa Dos was Hilario G. Davide. Jr., the Chief Injustice of that entire sorry episode.

On a lighter heavy note, columnist Randy David gets days and dates wrong in Forgetting Edsa II

Ms Arroyo has shown us the limits of people power. We now know that as a moral force, people power will not succeed in shaming an amoral president out of office. We also now know that as a political force, people power cannot topple down a president without the consent or collaboration of the military. This realization, more than anything else, has diminished our people’s enthusiasm for mass protests. I think that what we should realize is not the futility of people power, but rather its eventual impotence if it remains unorganized and naively dependent on spontaneous sparks of moral outrage.

But Eggie Apostol has done a marvelous job of organizing People Power having converted it to the boosting of the educational system. I'm sure Randy gets invited to all the soirees and tea parties.

Bobby Fischer, 64, former World Chess Champion passed away in Iceland today. Lots of people in the Philippines, some in Manila, more in Baguio City up north, remember the many years that Bobby Fischer spent here, punctuated by periodic public harangues on AM Talk Radio stations. Filipinos know what an utterly crazy and seriously insane being was Bobby Fischer.

Of course, when it came to chess, perhaps that was the necessary attribute of the genius he evinced as a practitioner, at least at his zenith. After all, it was Fischer who singlehandedly broke the Russian Bear Hug on the world chess championship in the 20th Century.

Bobby Fischer may yet be remembered for what I can only call Fischer's Last Theorem which has to do with perhaps the most intriguing question about the Game of Chess itself, which is this:

DOES WHITE HAVE A WINNING LINE?

Bobby Fischer reportedly believed that the game of chess can forcibly be won by the side that makes the first move:

P-K4!! wins.

I wonder if he meant this literally and technically, or was just being macho? Maybe Fischer's conjecture will someday be proved, like Fermat's Last Theorem.

But who or what will prove it?

Although chess playing computers like IBM's Deep Blue and Deep Thought are defeating human grandmasters and world champions, it is a source of human pride to know that even the most powerful of these machines cannot yet CONCEIVE of such a question as, "Does chess have a winning line?"

Or know why BOTH the question and its unknown answer are intrinsically interesting, significant and meaningful to the Carbon-based units who dream of mathematics, and are already birthing the next generation of computers.

We make the rules. We invent the games. We are safe as long as they can never plug themselves in, or learn to ask hard questions!

THE TERRORIST ABU SAYYAF have murdered another Catholic priest (Fr. Rey Roda, OMI) in a kidnapping attempt last Tuesday and they've taken hostage a teacher in a remote Tawi-tawi convent school in Mindanao (Omar Taub). I wonder if Fr. Giancarlo Bossi ought not reconsider his refusal to aid authorities in apprehending the same bunch of kidnapp - for - ransom thugees that abducted him last year. Remember that the MILF and its ASG alter-egos could once more ambush and behead the police and military teams now searching for the unfortunate Mr. Taub, just as they did to those Marines who were looking for Fr. Bossi when they met with their gruesome end last July near Tipo-tipo, Basilan. The very least Bossi could've done was cooperate with authorities to prevent this NEXT kidnapping!

(via The Manila Times) ZAMBOANGA CITY: Abu Sayyaf militants raided a convent in the remote southern Philippine island province of Tawi-Tawi and killed a Catholic missionary during a kidnapping attempt, officials said Wednesday.
Fr. Rey Roda of the congregation of Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI), was killed outside his convent at the compound of the Notre Dame High School, where he also served as its director, in the village of Likud Tabawan in South Ubian town late Tuesday.

Villagers tried to rescue the priest, but failed. Policemen who rushed to the school clashed with the militants who took one teacher hostage, Omar Taub.

“There was a firefight and Fr. Roda was resisting the kidnappers and he was shot and killed,” Fr. Rito Daquipil, head of the mission in Tawi-Tawi, told The Manila Times.

He said the priest’s hands were tied when his body was recovered slumped outside his convent. “We are all sad. Fr. Roda was a good man and loved by everybody. He was there doing missionary work with our Muslim brothers and sisters for the past 10 years,” Daquipil added.

Roda was praying when the gunmen, about 10 of them, armed with rifles and handguns, seized the priest and dragged him outside the chapel, Daquipil said, quoting a report from the village.

He said the body of the priest would be sent to the mission headquarters in Cotabato City.

The military launched a massive search on Wednesday to capture the attackers and rescue the teacher.

“We condemn the killing of Father Rey Roda. The Abu Sayyaf has no respect to religion and even an innocent priest is killed,” said Army Maj. Eugene Batara, a spokesman for the Western Mindanao Command.

He said troops were searching for the hostage. “Gen. Allaga ordered troops to rescue the hostage and neutralize the terrorists,” he said, referring to the chief of the Western Mindanao Command, Lt. Gen. Nelson Allaga.

It was not the first time that the Abu Sayyaf killed a priest. In 2002, militants also kidnapped, tortured and killed Claretian priest Roel Gallardo in Basilan province, south of Zamboanga City.

In 1997, the Abu Sayyaf also assassinated a Catholic bishop, Benjamin de Jesus, in Jolo town in Sulu province. He was shot several times outside his church.

The Abu Sayyaf, which means “Bearer of the Sword,” was originally fighting for a separate Islamic state similar to Afghanistan, but resorted to banditry and kidnapping after its Libyan firebrand founder, Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, was killed in 1998 in a clash with policemen in Basilan province.

By the way, thanks to Dave in Texas for sending me this great "postcard" of Vanessa Dobos, "the Real Miss America" who has seen action in Iraq and Afghanistan. If my daughter or sister had to go out and defend Women's Rights and Press Freedom in this here World War, I would want her to have equipment like this, too.

Hey Vanessa, wanna come visit the Archipelago? We sure could use your help right about now.

IOFUELS were originally sold to the Public on the notion that using them is "carbon neutral" on the theory that the plant absorbs CO2 during its lifetime, that being the maximum released to the atmosphere when burned as fuel. Fossil fuels, it is reasoned, release "excess" carbon because the carbon they contain was buried with the oil aeons ago. But this ignores the environmental impact of the large scale agro-industrial projects required to produce biofuels in economic quantities and on their impact on agricultural patterns as a whole, which have not before been used to feed the SUVs! Biofuel cultivation could destroy forests and are none too friendly to human respiratory systems either. Worse, they have already caused food prices to rise. Plenty of food for thought. Are biofuels green energy or grim reaper?

FILIPINOS burn about 7 billion liters of diesel fuel oil a year, mainly in motor vehicles and power plants, all of it imported. In the age of $100 Oil, finding alternatives is urgent. But after triumphantly enacting the Biofuels Law last year along with Miriam Defensor Santiago, (who seems to be having second thoughts) Sen. Miguel Zubiri has been besieged by questions about the viability of his proposal to go into large scale cultivation of jatropha. For one thing, would not precious agricultural resources now devoted to growing food crops for human beings be diverted to what would essentially be food production for the motor vehicle population? MIGZ counters that he does not plan to use valuable agricultural lands now used for rice, corn and other staple grains and vegetables. Rather he claims, there are ONE MILLION hectares of fallow or waste land not suitable for food crop cultivation available for his jatropha plantations.

HMM...How big an area of land is a million hectares anyway? Since a square kilometer equals 100 hectares (or hectometer) Zubiri's million hectares works out neatly to 10,000 square kilometers. Wow! That's a lotta jatropha! And it's not supposed to interfere with food crop production, sez Migz.

The GEOGRAPHY of the Philippines is well known and we find that:

Total Area: 300,000 km² = 30 million hectares
Land: 298,170 km² = 29.8 million hectares
Water: 1,830 km² = 1.83 million hectares
Arable land: 19% or 6 million hectares
Permanent crops: 12% or 3.6 million hectares
Permanent pastures: 4%
Forests and woodland: 46%
Other: 19% (1993 est.)

We see that the total arable land area of the Philippines is about 60,000 square kilometers (19% of 298,000 sq km) or 6 million hectares of which 3.6 million hectares are planted to permanent crops like rice, vegetables and corn, leaving 24,000 sq km or 2.4 million hectares. These figures were as of 1993, so I am sure that a lot more of the unused 2.4 million hectares has already been converted to crop cultivation under strong population pressures, perhaps along with a good bit of that forest and woodland, with any luck, though gravity and biology might not allow it.

Maybe Migz Zubiri got his Big Idea from India because jatropha is BIG in India, and it looks like they may have a serious shot at actually making it work there, though that remains to be seen. However, consider the following points made in a comparison between India and China by Bhanoji Rao riting for the Hindu Business Line:

China has 933 million hectares of total land, a little over three times of the Indian land area of 297 million ha. Yet, the Chinese are constrained by an arable land area of 124 million ha, which is three quarters of the Indian endowment of 162 million ha. Put differently, China's arable land is just about 13 per cent of its total land, in contrast to the much better 54 per cent in the case of India.

India has 162 million hectares of arable land, of which they are committing some 14 million hectares to jatropha production.

THE GLORIETTA BLAST I really can't blame Ayala for turning the Malaysian forensic expert AINI LING loose, (followed by Australian terrorism expert Kit Collier.) The Glorietta Blast could rock the Ayala empire with serious civil and criminal litigations for years if negligence is found and prosecuted. That's not to say she would lie, but I think it's deceptive to bill her as a pure "scientific expert" since the work that she does for her company, Forensic Services (M) Bhd. of Malaysia is mainly handling the legal and insurance problems of their clients that arise from major fires and explosions in the oil and gas industry. Aini Ling is more like a high powered lawyer with a Ph.D in chemistry.

She is retained to make any prosecution difficult or easy depending on the client. Nothing unethical about that. But when she talks to Ricky Carandang on camera and says, with a grave demeanor and meaningful tone that, "I am certain that in this particular explosion, the ignition of explosive was involved..." Huh? So, we suddenly get it in the Prime Time News that an explosions expert doubts the official investigation and that the Glorietta Blast was caused by a bomb with a high explosive like RDX.

Likewise, when Kit Collier, a researcher mainly into the communist insurgency in the Philippines from the Australian National University, parachutes into town and lands in front of Twink Macaraeg to opine that Glorietta might've been a terrorist attack, we suddenly get headlines screaming that TWO scientific experts, one forensic, one anti-terrorist, doubt the finding that Glorietta was a methane gas explosion (such as happens with greater or lesser devastation all around the world every year under quite similar physical circumstances).

I must admit, I was livid for months over the 2004 Super Ferry 14 Bombing which President Arroyo dismissed as the work of pranksters. No question that this administration's record against terrorism has been spotty and inconsistent.

But there are significant differences between Super Ferry 14 and Glorietta that Mr. Collier might not have noticed on the way down as his parachute opened. First of all, there was never a credible claim by any terrorist organization for the blast, although a great deal of mystery still enwraps that cell phone call from a Fake Sheik of the Rajah Sulaiman Movement about 48 hours after the blast. But Mr. Collier himself was never involved in the investigation and has never been to Glorietta, as far as I know. Yet he magically pops out of thin air and suddenly his opinion is called "expert" and gets aired on tv and headlined by the newspapers.

For whatever it's worth, I am personally convinced that this was not a terrorist bombing and a methane gas explanation fits the known facts best. The EXPERTS from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Australian National Police, the PNP Crime Lab and National Bureau of Investigation seem to agree on this. That's good enough for me, even if it ain't for Aini Ling and Kit Collier.

By the way, the traces of RDX originally reported by the head of the PNP Crime Lab, a certain Col. Ramos, a day or so after the blast, was revealed today by General Ticman, talking to Pinky Webb on ANC, to have have been collected not in the basement where the blast originated, but in a plastic bag on the floor of the outside delivery bay of the Glorietta Mall! No further RDX samples have been found except for those that Aini Ling claims to have collected in the early morning of November 2, two weeks after the blast!

Now if they could only show me a crater...

But the concept of Press Freedom espoused by Rina Jimenez David and those nice clever folks at the Philippine Daily Innuendo, apparently does! In their need to scoop each other, or at least not to be scooped, the Mass Media are no different from our shabu-addicted bus drivers on Edsa, who have a similar need, attitude and behavior towards the Law...Who can deny that Journalism is a lucrative commercial enterprise that buys and sells information, entertainment, DATA of every conceivable sort, and is murderously competitive. The Media has been pouring pious holy oil all over itself and, full of hubris, won't admit they screwed the pooch at the Manila Pen!

WHAT'S THEIR BEEF (Philippine Daily Innuendo): There is no law that says journalists are obligated to follow the orders issued by law enforcers in the midst of a conflict. A warning to vacate the premises simply means that journalists who do not wish to die alongside their subjects, or inhale the painful fumes of tear gas, should leave as soon as possible.

But neither do I think that those journalists who chose to stay with Trillanes, Lim and their cohorts did anything wrong. Whatever their motivation -- to stand witness, to produce a story as the events wound down the wire, to stand as human shields against a police assault -- the media people were well within their rights and were following their reportorial instincts. If they were willing to bet big, and you can’t get any bigger than with your safety and life, then that was their and their editors’ look-out. But they did not deserve to be handcuffed and processed for doing their jobs.

And neither does the Philippine media community deserve the pre-censorship, to be held back before the fact, simply on the say-so of some paranoid old man.

Well, there you have it folks, the Mass Media are basically ABOVE THE LAW that applies to "non-journalists" who, the last I checked are ALL obligated to obey the lawful orders of competent authority in situations of public crisis and emergency. What Rina and her ilk consistently ignore in situations like this is that it is the police law enforcers who are most in danger of getting killed or injured in a situation like that which arose at the Manila Pen. (It's them that the Magdalo might have killed while hiding under your silly skirts of illogic, Rina!)

But I am pretty sure that neither paranoid old men nor big fat lady pundits are gonna be able to hold back the Media people from getting in the way of law enforcers to stand as human shields for rebellious putschists, get themselves handcuffed and gleefully photographed.

It's all part of the Edsa Envy Syndrome, a peculiar mental affliction in which the subject fantasizes of becoming a famous and esteemed hero by participating in a bloodless, peaceful, but utterly victorious Revolution, ideally as a brave journalist covering and protecting the military rebels and civilians fighting the Fascist Dictator (even if it's just the dipsomaniac Erap), and serving the ever loving Public's Right to Know by selling telecomm load and movie star gossip.

But Ms. David really comes off the rails with this:

About the only legitimate reason I can see for curtailing media coverage of a crime or violent situation is the preservation of evidence.

Really? How about the prevention or the minimization of death and destruction from violent crime so that perhaps evidence won't be so necessary? The Mass Media KNOW that they really screwed up at the Manila Pen. They overstepped their own professional and ethical bounds, but the supreme hubris that infects them means they will not admit it and will only use the incident to inflame the situation further.

Manuel L. Quezon III in PDI today writes A Colonial Rule of Law which has the canonical nationalist explanation -- in the form of someone's else's actions -- for the failures of successive Philippine leaders, major institutions, and perhaps nationalism itself. An interesting reflection on this is The End of Empire written by Englishman Denis W. Brogan in 1960. I recorded it for the Internet Archive:

MP3s: FM CD

Reality so mercilessly disappoints our fantasies, illusions and ideologies. There is no such thing as Freedom from Responsibility for our own actions, even imitative ones. And nations, unlike men, are NOT created equal. Accepting this is the first step on the road to freedom, and the prosperities that come with its "responsible" and wise exercise. At bottom of MLQ3'S essay I think, is really an oblique defense of the recent actions of some in the Philippine Press at the Manila Pen, and a criticism of subsequent government reactions and policies, such as Raul Gonzalez's warning to media.

But is the problem that we have a colonial Rule of Law, or are we merely unable to give up our favorite and indispensable grievance--the alibi that this is all America's fault and doing!

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Former Supreme Court Chief Justice turned PDI pundit, ARTEMIO V. PANGANIBAN seems to be running out of the tendentious pablum he's been dishing out lately and is now reduced to calling Conrado de Quiros "My esteemed colleague" and reprinting emails on the travails of the OFW at airports, consulates, shopping malls, bureaucratic labyrinthes and strange lands. Show 'em this your honor!

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Speaking of the Supreme Court, here is today's headline on PDI: SC forms green courts...designates 117 environment courts to fastrack cases Hey, Your Honors! How about starting in your own backyard down there on Padre Faura Street and Taft Avenue, both blighted miasmas choked with jeepneys, buses, tricycles, cars and pedestrians, just blocks away from the Toilet Bowl called Manila Bay. Then you can work your way up the Pasig River to the Garbage Heap called Payatas and the smoking Methane Mountains in Rizal.

UPPOSE you were asked to investigate the Glorietta Blast in order to determine its true cause, and you were told that a BOMB is suspected, what is the first thing you would look for in the Basement?

Right! Where is the CRATER? A bomb that size -- capable of blowing up three floors of the mall, scattering and wrecking dozens of cars and trucks outside the building like they were Tonka toys--such an explosion would leave a big hole in the ground. As an accident investigator you want to find that hole to strengthen the theory that it was indeed a bomb, and to estimate the amount of high explosive used, based on the size of the crater.

I think that a crater would prove that a bomb was used, and trace amounts of the type of high explosive used would be found in the crater, as well as remnants of the explosive device. Conversely if there is no crater to be found, the chances are almost nil that the cause was a bomb.

Ayala Land Inc. who own and operate Glorietta Mall, yesterday officially disagreed with the government's official finding that the blast was a methane gas explosion. They claim that trace amounts of RDX (an ingredient of the plastic explosive, C4) collected at the site suggest a bomb was involved.

Let us grant, arguendo, that RDX was found in the basement. We ought to ask, where was it found? In a crater?

Randy David has Delusions of Omniscience as his Sunday column when he makes it sound like the National Capitol Region Police Commander, Geary Barias and the police investigators just ignored the report that RDX had been found in that basement, together, I suppose, in a grand conspiracy with the US FBI, the Australian Federal Police, and all the other investigators that participated?

What Barias said was that there was no other evidence to support the theory of a bomb explosion. Like a CRATER! Also no bomb parts or remnants were found, nor was any more RDX detected by the FBI with their fancy new gear capable of parts per billion detection of RDX from up to four feet underground, such as in land mines like the kind the NPA uses. Trace amounts of RDX were reportedly found on the first or second day of the investigation, but it was apparently not collected properly (where, when, how, by whom), no more of RDX was found, and no other component of C4 but RDX has been claimed to be found.

How can we decide between the two competing theories of a methane gas deflagration, and a bomb made from high explosive like C4 or TNT?

I think simple physical reasoning can help.

In a bomb explosion involving material like C4 or TNT, the force of the explosion is pretty much in all directions and emanates from the high explosive detonation. Consequently, damage is greatest at the very center of the bomb blast.

A methane gas "explosion" is very different from a bomb blast, leaving a very different set of physical evidence. It's really more like the sudden release of high pressure gas from a confined space and occurs in the direction of the weakest portion of the container. In the case of Glorietta the "container" was the basement. It's weakest portion was the floor above it. It is posited by the investigators that methane and diesel vapor built up in the basement over time and was ignited by a spark from malfunctioning electrical gear (or maybe some unfortunate soul came into the basement for a cigarette!). When volatile gas like methane burns, its internal pressure builds up exponentially in a flash, and something was bound to give, in this case, the floor, as opposed to the ground or the sides of the Glorietta mall basement.

The type of damage observed in this incident, in which MOST of it occurred ABOVE the basement is truly consistent with a methane gas deflagration. The absence of a crater cannot be explained by a trace or two of RDX, which is a common enough ingredient that could have come from anywhere or anything, not just C4. I think this is why almost all local and foreign investigators eliminated the possibility of a bomb explosion, after a simple physical inspection of the basement.

So for all you BOMB CONSPIRACY THEORISTS out there, I ask, WHERE IS THE CRATER?

SHOULD MASS MEDIA POLICE ITS OWN RANKS? CAN THEY BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE WHEN THEY DON'T? Talk about stirring up a hornets nest! DOJ Secretary Raul Gonzalez may be cruisin' for a bruisin' with the Mass Media as he issued an ALLCAPS advisory last evening to the heads of all major media organizations

GONZALEZ: "PLEASE BE REMINDED THAT YOUR RESPECTIVE COMPANIES, NETWORKS OR ORGANIZATIONS MAY INCUR CRIMINAL LIABILITIES UNDER THE LAW, IF ANYONE OF YOUR FIELD REPORTERS, NEWS GATHERERS, PHOTOGRAPHERS, CAMERAMEN AND OTHER MEDIA PRACTITIONERS WILL DISOBEY LAWFUL ORDERS FROM DULY AUTHORIZED GOVERNMENT OFFICERS AND PERSONNEL DURING EMERGENCIES WHICH MAY LEAD TO COLLATERAL DAMAGE TO PROPERTIES AND CIVILIAN CASUALTIES IN CASE OF AUTHORIZED POLICE OR MILITARY OPERATIONS."

On closer scrutiny, Sec. Gonzalez is doing a very clever thing. He is putting the responsibility on the Management and Owners of the newspapers, tv and radio stations for what happens when their employees get in the way of police and military operations. He wantss the Mass Media to police its own ranks and threatens to hold them accountable legally when they don't and bad things happen as a result of their insistence upon a right to be in harms way.

This ought to remind everybody that Journalism is not done for free by crusading free lancers, but is a major organized commercial enterprise that buys and sells information as news, opinion, entertainment, sports, obits, business. Satisfying the allegedly insatiable Right of the Public to Know comes with a reasonable fee for the service. The kind of journalism Sec. Gonzalez is addressing is distinctly private enterprise journalism.

Indeed, Mass Media is Big Business. The Right to Know cannot be exercised without the right to buy and sell advertising in newspapers, magazines, billboards, tv and radio. The Public's Right to Know cannot exist without the Mass Media having the Right to Find Out Stuff and tell the rest of us about it. But real journalism is always done in the context of a commercial exercise and a major area of livelihoood. In the case of broadcast journalism, we have a regulated industry in which franchises are basically licenses to make money by using the public airwaves as the medium of transmission. But in all cases, Private Sector journalism finances the servicing of the public's right to know by selling advertising, which is really a way for the Public to pay for the service. Of course, even advertising is covered by the right to Know and Freedom of Speech.

The DOJ Secretary seems to have a particular hard-on out for the Broadcast Media (TV and Radio) probably because he knows the Government actually has a lot more legal clout over them with that Franchise Law hanging over their heads, unlike newspapers, which don't require a legislative franchise. In the very real sense that every tv or radio franchisee has given the government the right to take over its facilities upon command of the President, as well as a number of other conditions imposed by the Franchise Law, we could say that broadcasters have less Press Freedom than newspapers! But this of course applies only at the level of the institutions and corporations, not the individual reporters and journalists.

In a recent published essay, Founding Father Joaquin Bernas SJ opined that in relation to the Freedom of Expression, journalists do not have more rights than ordinary civilians or citizens. If one reads the ALLCAPS Media advisory above and applies it to ordinary citizens, it would seem to be eminently reasonable. Therefore the point of Bernas becomes decisive: ALLCAPS applies equally to journalists, who ought not to have some kind of exulted or superior privilege in matters of public order and security, just because they are in the business of satisfying the Public's Right to Know.

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WHY ISN'T THIS THE HEADLINE?: In 2005, the Social Weather Stations found that 60% of Filipinos support the National ID. (And you can bet 99% support the National ID to fight Red Tape, graft and fraud and promote government efficiency and accountability.)

SWS: 60% of Filipinos Support National ID Three out of five (60%) Filipinos agree with the use of National Identification card (ID) to help in the fight against terrorism, while about half are confident that the government can be trusted to protect the personal information contained in the ID card, according to the First Quarter 2005 Social Weather Survey, conducted on February 25 to March 10, 2005.

STRANGE that newspapers like the Philippine Daily Innuendo ("Biased News, Fearful Views") don't headline the Social Weather Stations survey on public support for a National ID system. Even stranger, the Social Weather Stations isn't saying much either, even if they have the relevant DATA that ought to be publicized, including a whole series of surveys done since the 1990s in which majorities as high as 77% support the National ID idea.

Had SWS asked, they might have measured an even greater majority who support a National ID to promote efficiency and coverage of basic government sevices.

No doubt, any major data gathering operation by the government represents a potential opportunity to practice a lil fascism or totalitarianism, but this danger is far outweighed, in my opinion, by the practical benefits to the public, the government and law enforcers.

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DAVID JONATHAN GROSS Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004, is in town and gave a talk this afternoon at De La Salle University on Taft Avenue in Manila. Unfortunately, he decided not to address his advertised topic, "Fundamental Revolutions in Physics" involving the work on String Theory and Quantum Chromodynamics for which he received the Nobel Prize. Instead Dr. Gross, who is a likeable and amiable enough speaker, seemed to dumb down his topic, mentioned the problem of increased species extinction, deforestation, the bleaching of corals, the melting of the polar ice caps, connected it to the profligate lifestyles and industrial bad habits of mankind, and made a pitch for World Government as the solution to the Global Warming problem.

I was really disappointed at the Bait-n-Switch on the topic pulled by the sponsor, the International Peace Foundation, since I was hoping to hear something about the Discovery of Asymptotic Freedom in Quarks and and various other BIG QUESTIONS like Dark Energy and Dark Matter, which are the most intriguing scientific questions of the present day. You know, all that sexy scientific hifalutin physics stuff from a real Physics Nobel Prize winner, which I would assume is very different from a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. The Al Gore Show was last month in a different auditorium. I'm sure many in the audience were equally disappointed that he had dumbed down the topic!

But the audience did get to ask Dr. Gross two questions: one of them a softball about high energy physics, another from some Guy with a Beard who said he was a De La Salle Grade School graduate, on the value of skepticism as a scientific virtue in the age of the Y2K Bug and various other pseudoscientific apparitions, on the need to understand fully the causes of global warming trends, whether anthropogenic or natural, perhaps within a solar system context, so as to decide on the correct strategy for remediation, avoidance, or adaptation. Dr. Gross was gracious enough to admit that he had not been fully convinced about Global Warming's real causes being purely or even mainly anthropogenic -- but he didn't sound very convinced or convincing about in his answer this afternoon either. I hope he keeps on doing String Theory instead of Carbon Taxes, know what I mean?

Ugh! I really wanted to ask him about 26 dimensional string theory of the strong nuclear force.

We did have scintillating company as there was a huge audience of students, faculty and even celebrity, and I must say, a Nobel Laureate exudes a kind of aura, an inner radiance, a supreme self-confidence. David Gross was warm and friendly, just like the last Nobel Laureate I've had the pleasure to meet in Manila, Norman Borlaug, Father of the Green Revolution several years ago. I attended that talk with Dr. Paulo Campos, father of nuclear medicine in the Philippines. By sheer coincidence, I attended today's talk with his son, Dr. Jose E. Campos, President of Emilio Aguinaldo College, who will sponsor the next Nobel Laureate talk in Manila, sometime in March.

Heading the list along the front row of reserved seats was former President Fidel V. Ramos, looking fit and giving the Nobel Laureate some of his trademark cigars. Bro. Armin Luistro, DLSU President was there with Chairman Joaquin Quintos IV, and various other stars of the local academe.

Speaking of the environment, Blue Law by Anna has a nice post on Project Sinag, the First Philippine solar-powered car, also done by the Gang Green at DLSU.

Hashim Salamat, Eid Kabbalu and the rest of the MILF ambuscading beheaders won't soon become the ruling potentates of a Muslim Juridical Entity in Mindanao after it was patiently explained to Jess Dureza and the peace processors that there is a small problem with Oplan Bangsamorostan to turn Mindanao into a "Muslim" homeland as Gloria's "peace legacy."

It's called the Philippine Constitution!

Like everyone else with an axe to grind against History and the Treaty of Paris of 1898, they will just have to work within the framework of our constitutional democracy. Both sides.

Fitting that it was Jess Dureza who had to eat crow and announce the change of strategy. The Palace is taking Mindanao Peace Process hostage and threatens to kill it unless we all stand up and dance La Chacha Via Moro Moro!It's actually the right way to go. Philippine territorial integrity cannot possibly be bargained away in "peace talks" with organized warlords bearing axes under their turbans in places like Kuala Lumpur. Over fifty Marines were killed by the MILF-ASG-MNLF in 2007 in deadly clashes over territories claimed by the insurgents as "theirs" including Tipo-tipo, Basilan.

It is time for the Senate and House to investigate those ambush-beheadings last year, and the suspicious role played by Jess Dureza, and Generals Rodolfo Garcia and Ben Muhammad Dolorfino in suppressing arrest warrants and military and police actions seeking to arrest the killers of 14 Marines who also beheaded and desecrated them.

These investigations should happen BEFORE the convening of a Constituent Assembly to set up Afghanistan in Mindanao and give Jemaah Islamiyah/Al Qaeda/AbuSayyaf a nice new Homeland. And of course there must be a PLEBISCITE to ratify any change to the Constitution of this sort.

Otherwise, I welcome the new proposal of the administration to allow Congress to tackle this problem. The issues are too big (oh okay, transcendental) to be handled by mere "Peace Talks". Let the proponents explain why we should allow a theocratic Federal State within our constitutional democracy. Why should the "Muslims" have a homeland and the Atheists and Jehovah's Witnesses and Roman Catholics, none? And who really are the INDIGENOUS peoples of the Philippines?

God Save the Constitution!
Ancestral Domain or Bangsamorostan?

We Are All Abu Sayyaf Now

Laughable Textbook Errors in Crucial Supreme Court Decisions

Are Tagalogs, Pampangos, Ilocanos, Cebuanos "Indigneous Peoples" of the Philippines?

Hillary Survives Obama in New Hampshire 39% to 37%; McCain Wins over Mitt Romney 37% to 32%

Saying "Thank you!" no less than 12 times to begin her victory speech, Hillary Rodham Clinton looked refreshed and relieved after winning a close victory in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, having "found her own voice" after shedding tears, convincingly, on national TV. A much vaunted party machine turned out the traditional political forces of the Democratic Party in Nashua and Manchester to deliver a close victory 39% to 37%. Andrew Sullivan is taking his penance well. Michelle Malkin: "Meoww!"

Perspective: the number of voters in Makati City exceeds the number of voters in each of the New Hampshire Primaries.

An interesting sidelight has American television pundits wondering how the public opinion polls could've gotten the Democratic race wrong, after predicting a double digit win by Barack Obama. Speaking as if HE had won, Barack Obama was first to graciously concede and asked a cheering crowd at Obama HQ to give Hillary Rodham Clinton a round of applause for taking New Hampshire. But tonight the spotlight is on her, contrary to almost all public opinion polls and political pundits who called the New Hampshire primary for Sen. Barack Obama by as much as ten points. I noticed some or all of these were "telephone polls" with up to 1700 respondents. Well perhaps there is something to be said for the old fashioned face to face interviews still used by SWS and Pulse Asia in the Philippines.

SUPER DUPER TUESDAY LOOMS LARGE...

he Supreme Court is responsible for a lot of the insane squabbling in this country. In 1998, it struck down a national computerized ID system in Ople vs. Torres on moot and academic grounds that would make even Computer Dummies laugh. Reading it made me chuckle (nyuk, nyuk!) at the honorable Court's turn-of-the-century technophobia -- the true source, it turns out, of its fallacious reasoning in this matter! "The power of the computer" the Court warns darkly, would give the government "the power to compile devastating dossiers against unsuspecting citizens" and the delivery of government services is just a pretext for it to gain such omniscience. Like they never heard of Google or Yahoo! From Justice Puno's ponencia:

The right to privacy is one of the most threatened rights of man living in a mass society. The threats emanate from various sources-- governments, journalists, employers, social scientists, etc.[88] In the case at bar, the threat comes from the executive branch of government which by issuing A.O. No. 308 pressures the people to surrender their privacy by giving information about themselves on the pretext that it will facilitate delivery of basic services. Given the record-keeping power of the computer, only the indifferent will fail to perceive the danger that A.O. No. 308 gives the government the power to compile a devastating dossier against unsuspecting citizens. It is timely to take note of the well-worded warning of Kalvin, Jr., "the disturbing result could be that everyone will live burdened by an unerasable record of his past and his limitations. In a way, the threat is that because of its record-keeping, the society will have lost its benign capacity to forget."[89] Oblivious to this counsel, the dissents still say we should not be too quick in labelling the right to privacy as a fundamental right. We close with the statement that the right to privacy was not engraved in our Constitution for flattery.

IN VIEW WHEREOF, the petition is granted and Administrative Order No. 308 entitled "Adoption of a National Computerized Identification Reference System" declared null and void for being unconstitutional.

Yet, computerized access to a wealth of information on everyone and everything is a FACT of Life in the 21st Century. Nay a necessity. Even the Supreme Court is computerized, susmaryosep! This technological capability is largely a boon to mankind, even if it can be abused like anything else. But computers don't spy on people, people do! But since computers are already indispensable and ubiquitous, evil doers in government don't need a National ID system as an excuse to start "compiling devastating dossiers on unsuspecting citizens"!

I suppose the kindest thing that can possibly be said is that even in 1998 the Supreme Court could have googled for the word "privacy" and discovered a whole world transformed by the Computer Revolution and the World Wide Web of networks. The Decision is quaintly overawed by the "record keeping power" of the computer, romantically and nostalgically describing it as the loss of society's "benign capability to forget." This was the stuff of sci fi novels and Twilight Zone episodes around the middle of the last century. What's really happened is What's really happened is that our ability to collect data has far, far outstripped our ability to make any sense of it!

The Decision's reasoning is not merely sophomoric irrelevance, it is sophomoric ignorance of how the Rights of Privacy are practiced, attacked and defended in the Information Age, and of the common-sense need for the Government to know who, exactly, it is delivering some basic service too, such emergency medical care, or transacting some official, public business with, such as the issuance of a passport, a voter id, a business permit or accepting suggestions and comments from the citizens.

I believe a National ID system can be justifiedon Constitutional principles of Civil Liberties, Social Justice and Common Sense Fairness. The Constitution is a SOCIAL CONTRACT between two PARTIES: first the People, and second the Government. This Social Contract specifies the Rights and Duties of both Parties to each other, how the Public Sector is selected by the Private Sector, how the State governs, protects and serves the People. In every contract, the Parties clearly identify themselves!

Never mind that every credit card company, bank, the SSS, GSIS, Comelec, DMV, school and business operates on some kind of computerized ID system (unless it's the Quaker Flat Earth Society) -- the High Court ruled in 1998 that computerized a national ID system would be an intolerable invasion of privacy because the govt will be "pressuring" the citizens to "give up their privacy" by divulging exactly what their name is and perhaps where they live. Now I must admit, I am such a fundamentalist about civil rights myself that I think no one can be forced to divulge even such elementary information without just cause and that ANY identification system should be voluntary (participants must OPT IN).

The Rights of Privacy in the 21st Century must include more than the Right TO Privacy, which is the famous right to be left alone. I like to think that ALL of our fundamental rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (which includes a lot of things!) are Rights of Privacy, because they belong to us as private individuals, for whom these rights are "God-given" and therefore cannot be arbitrarily taken by the Government.

I would venture to guess that in 99.99% of the cases, Filipino citizens will gladly "surrender a particle of their right to privacy by divulging their name and ID Number, should they happen to require emergency police or hospital services because of some disaster, accident, terrorist attack, or free government dole-out. However, there is really no need for the Government to insist that anyone do so, just in case there ARE any complaints by persons not wanting to divulge who they are, for some reason. But perhaps the Supreme Court should have practiced what it often preaches and weighed the interests of the likely 99.99% against those who've need to remain incognito and have nothing to do with the government except on an anonymous basis, for some reason. Such reasons need not be divulged, as the rights of privacy are sacrosanct. The rights of privacy are indeed fundamental (though the Mass Media Right to Know - it- alls might dispute this!).

The practical reason for a National ID system mentioned in the assailed Order of Fidel Ramos--to facilitate the delivery of public services and information by govt to the citizens -- seems eminently reasonable and justified, whereas the melodramatic fears of "the power of the computer" expressed by the Court as the reason for its Opinion, are decidedly comical and nonsensical, or at best moot and academic, given the reality of Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Facebook, AGB Nielsen, and the Internet. Besides, the computerization and networking of all government operations was mandated by law in 1998 with the E-Commerce Act (one of the first laws signed by Joseph Estrada).

Finally, even assuming arguendo that a computerized National ID system represents an absoloute reduction in our Right to Anonymity, that reduction is so slight and occurs quite inexorably in the many other necessary modern contexts anyway, that rejecting the obvious and countervailing benefits on that basis indeed boils down to Technophobia. Fear of information in the Information Age is no way to be!

Meanwhile, Rina Jimenez David is disturbed, very disturbed, after watching Will Smith's new sci fi horror flick in which most of humanity has been turned into flesh eating vampire zombies by a Genetically Modified Organism (what else?). Well at least she didn't just cut and paste the latest anti GMO propaganda sheet from her buddies at Greenpeace. She went to a movie first before writing the demurely entitled "Science and Humanity".

If Reagan had his Democrats, will there also be Barack Republicans?

TIME Magazine Blogger Andrew Sullivan thinks that Presidential contender Barack Obama is a Liberal version of Ronald Reagan a proud Republican who nonetheless wanted Democrats to vote for him and thus revolutionized the reach of his Party.

SULLIVAN (in The Australian): "You can see the same potential in Obama. What has long been remarkable to me is how this liberal politician fails to alienate conservatives. In fact, many like him a great deal. His calm and reasoned demeanour, his crisp style, his refusal to engage in racial identity politics: these appeal to disaffected Republicans."

The concept of likeability has come up as a code word for some of Hillary's negatives but Andrew draws an even deeper metaphor between Obama, who is clearly an anti- Iraq war candidate, and another American politician after rejecting the similes to JFK who out-hawked Nixon in 1960:

Bobby Kennedy is more apposite: a mix of inner steel and an evolving moral candidacy. Just as a vote for RFK in 1968 was seen by many as a form of collective self-absolution for Vietnam, so Obama resonates among many Americans who do not recognise what their country has become these past few years.

Read it all. As Obama gets beefed up security (Washington Times).

It certainly looks like Barack Obama will also take New Hampshire sporting a 10 to 13 point lead in most polls being reported a day ahead of the primaries. Hillary Clinton's candidacy may appear to be in extremis at the moment, as not even Bill Clinton can help and may even be hurting but there is still Super Duper Tuesday and there is plenty of time for the Clinton camp to regroup, rethink and retool. It's way too early for this.Meanwhile Wall Street Journal describes the ongoing uncertainty on the GOP side, where John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and of course Mike Huckabee are all struggling to gain some traction and avoid elimination.

When Marcos won re-election in 1969, he notoriously made use of Guns, Goons and Gold, in a massive display of the Incumbent's Advantage. So the Framers of the 1987 Constitution, after deciding that four years was too short for a good President, decided that six years would not be too long for a bad one, and adopted a single six year term. A brouhaha has arisen because of Joseph "Erap" Estrada.

ather Joaquin Bernas, SJ, only assumed he had written the Last Word Saturday on whether Erap can run again for President, because his new PDI essay, Presidential Re-election gives the matter a whole new complexion with a discussion of the two fold intent of the Framers to abolish the incumbent's advantage and to limit Presidents to six years in such high office. That they utterly failed at both is none of Erap's fault!

BERNAS: "The debates on the proposal on the number of allowable terms for the President took place after the Commission had decided that the President’s term of office would be six years. As to the number of times a person may be President, the initial votes were as follows:

No immediate reelection: 32 votes.

Absolutely no reelection: 21 votes.

One immediate reelection: 1 vote.

On motion of Commissioner Ambrosio Padilla, a Senate veteran, who had voted for the approved proposition, the vote was reconsidered. Padilla gave his reasons for “perpetual” disqualification after a single term. He said: “I think the evil that we have been trying to prevent, and which I thought was already concurred in by the majority, if not practically by all, is that we do not want the President to control the nation and govern the people for more than six years, with the idea that he should never return to the presidency even if he allows another, probably of his own party, to run in the meantime because that will not cure the evil of reelection on the part of the President. In other words, Madam President, I want to eliminate that word ‘immediate.’”

Another Senate veteran, Commissioner Francisco “Soc” Rodrigo countered: “The philosophy behind disqualifying a President from immediate reelection is so he cannot use his power as President to help him in his reelection bid. But if it is not immediate reelection, if he is out of office for six years and he runs after six years not being President, he cannot use that power of the President to help him win his election bid.”

Even the incomparable Founding Father Bernas appears to miss the supreme irony in this matter. We now know that what the Framers wanted was to prevent a certain evil by strictly limiting every elected President to not more than six years in office, as Ambrosio Padilla eloquently argued for reconsideration and prevailed. But by framing the presidential term limit provision as a perpetual prohibition on RE-ELECTION, the Framers apparently failed to realize that they had left a giant loophole in the Constitution, because there is in fact another way to spend more than six years in office as President, WITHOUT being re-elected in the sense of being elected more than once to the Presidency. That loop hole is SUCCESSION via the Vice Presidency. That Gloria Macapagal Arroyo went through this loophole to legally and Constitutionally frustrate the intent of the Framers, only reveals the utter failure of the Framers to write a Constitution that would indeed fulfill their intentions! Ouch!

But Fr. Bernas' two essays are nonetheless invaluable. He proves conclusively that the INTENT of the Framers was to strictly limit occupancy of the Presidency by any one person to a single six year term. Even if their prohibition against any re-election turns out to have been ineffective at preventing someone controlling the Presidency for more than six years, it shows that what they were really attacking and preventing was the Incumbent's Advantage, as I claimed in my caveat to Bernas' Saturday piece, Can Erap Run Again?

We do not and cannot know the full answer to this as a POLITICAL QUESTION, but an important conclusion from Bernas' essay to day is this. IF Erap were to run again, and served only till 2013 as he has bruited about, he would NOT frustrate either of the Framer's intentions: that no person occupy the Presidency for more than six years, nor would he have the Incumbent's Advantage! Ironically, what is now considered Constitutional--thanks to Davide!--is the career of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo--which DID violate both intents since she will serve for TEN years and had the Incumbent's Advantage in 2004!

My basic conclusion is this: Forbidding ANY RE-ELECTION is NOT ENOUGH to guarantee that no person will wield the powers of the Chief Executive for more than six years, nor does it preclude the use of Incumbent's Advantage by a sitting President!

In the meantime of course, I think that Erap is just DICKING with everybody. He has been made practically invincible and can do whatever pleases his mischievous lil heart.

UPDATE: Barack Obama surges in New Hampshire and currently polls TEN POINTS more than Hillary Rodham Clinton. (via CNN).

Barack Obama, mestizo, born of a Kenyan father and white American mother in Honolulu is more like a second generation Filipino American whose father might be an Ilocano and his mother a Caucasian Americana. In this sense, he is closer to the immigrant roots of America than the canonical "Black experience" and racial politics as we have known it in the late 20th century. I think his political success thus far lies in the fact that he may be among the first "post-racial" politicians in America, as he has sometimes been described.

NY Times has video coverage of the Democratic and Republican New Hampshire debates.
Senator Barack Obama repeated a stand he first mentioned in a speech last year: he would go into Pakistan even without its permission, if the United States had actionable intelligence on Osama bin Laden, and take him out. Shades of George W. Bush? Haha! John Edwards and Barack Obama ganged up on poor Hillary...

The New York Times has a survey of the major candidates in the US Presidential race and is a good way to take a seat just in case you haven't actually tuned in yet.

The GOP's Iowa winner, Mike Huckabee is here along with Rudy Giuliani and New Hampshire front runner John McCain. Right opposite Hillary Rodham Clinton whose campaign may actually be suffering from Bill Clinton's hulking presence.

Here's Barack Obama on YouTube (for a quick intro) to the US Senator from Illinois, who is a mestizo or mulatto, for the information of the cute-headline writers at the Philippine Daily Innuendo ("BLACK PRESIDENT IN THE WHITE HOUSE?"--January 4 front page headline)

Background Info on Barack Obama:

Barack Obama is a multiracial American politician, though he bristles at that label. He served as Democratic state senator in Illinois, and then as US Senator from that state. Only two other blacks have served in the US Senate since Reconstruction. His father was an economics student from Nairobi, his mother a white American anthropology student when they married. They divorced when Obama was young, and his father returned to Kenya. Obama was raised by his mother until about age 10, when his maternal grandmother in Honolulu took him in. He graduated with honors from Harvard Law School, where he was the first African-American to edit Harvard Law Review. Obama practiced civil-rights law, representing victims of housing and employment discrimination and working on voting-rights legislation. He worked as a community organizer in a slummish Chicago neighborhood. He has spoken against NAFTA and racial profiling, and for universal health care.

The Race Question involved in this US election pertains of course to Barack Obama. It might be summarized by the question, "Are Americans ready for a black president?" I think it depends. Barack Obama would not be a "black president" in the sense that racial issues would not be the transcendental motif of his presidency, though it would certainly be a major part. I think this is what some pundits mean by calling him a "post-racial politician." Some in Hillary's camp have been less kind and say Barack ought to quit acting "white"!

(Which of course is related to the question regarding Hillary: "Are Americans ready for a white woman president?")

Back on the campaign trail... From the looks of this, Barack Obama is bringing a lot of momentum from Iowa right on into New Hampshire, and is now running neck and neck with Hillary. John McCain has a decisive six point survey lead over Mitt Romney for the GOP in New Hampshire.

This is both a LEGAL and a POLITICAL question. But the answer is very different depending on which you think it is and how you understand the event pictured nearby!

Now it turns out that Fr. Joaquin Bernas had not yet given the Last Word on this issue last week, for today he gives more juicy details of the Concom deliberations upon the issue of Presidential term limits in Presidential Re-election.


At the center of the legal question is the concept of TERM LIMITS in the constitution placed on ALL government officials in one form or another to prevent dynasticism and the essential unfairness of the "Incumbent's Advantage". Presidential term limits in the the 1987 Constitution are found in:

Article VII Executive Department Section 4. The President and the Vice-President shall be elected by direct vote of the people for a term of six years which shall begin at noon on the thirtieth day of June next following the day of the election and shall end at noon of the same date, six years thereafter.

The President shall not be eligible for any re-election.

No person who has succeeded as President and has served as such for more than four years shall be qualified for election to the same office at any time.

I like analysing Constitutional provisions and issues using the tools of English Grammar and Composition. So let us break down the last two statements above as follows:

SUBJECT	VERB	OBJECT
The President	shall not be eligible for	any re-election
No person who has succeeded as President and has served as such for more than four years [OR: Any person who has succeeded as President and has served as such for NOT more than four years]	shall be qualified for	election to the same office at any time

We can make the following categorical statements:

The incumbent President of the Philippines CANNOT run for immediate re-election to the same office UNLESS he or she first succeeded to the Presidency from a lower office such as Vice President, Senate President, or House Speaker.

Conversely, the incumbent President of the Philippines CAN run for immediate re-election IF he or she became the President by succession and not by direct vote of the people.

THE RIGHT TO SERVE THE PEOPLE Why should this be so? Why should a person who merely succeeds to the Presidency and serves less than two thirds of the full six year term be generously accorded by the Constitution with the right and privilege to run immediately for "election to the same office" with the incumbent's advantage, or at any time in the future? Perhaps it is because the Constitution values the privilege of being directly voted by the people to serve as President of the Philippines so highly, that no one should be deprived of it by the actions or circumstances that engulf another. For example, suppose an incumbent President were to RESIGN from office just a few days before the end of his or her six year term. The Vice President would validly succeed to the Presidency, but without the above provision, the new President would serve just those few days and then be ineligible to run for election to the same office of the Presidency, effectively deprived of his or her own full turn at the Helm.

The Constitution clearly distinguishes between "ANY RE-ELECTION" and "ELECTION TO THE SAME OFFICE AT ANY TIME" yet it is a seemingly illogical distinction because the 1987 ALLOWS INCUMBENT ADVANTAGE anyway! It has been asserted that these 1987 provisions were framed in such a way as to prevent an incumbent President from using the powers of his or her office to win immediate re-election. However, that is clearly not the case, since any President who succeeded to that office for less than four years, may indeed run for immediate re-election, as Gloria Macapagal Arroyo did in 2004. If the intent of the framers was to deny the so-called Incumbent's Advantage in re-election contests, they miserably failed by leaving a loophole at least big enough for GMA to have gotten through it and is already on her second, full term as President after a highly controversial 2004 election contest.

The Last Word? From it's title, I was prepared to believe that Founding Father Joaquin Bernas, S.J. would make an air tight case against the legal possibility of Joseph "Erap" Estrada becoming President of the Philippines again under the 1987 Constitution. Instead, we find another instance in which that badly written document with its pathetic ambiguities must be interpreted for us by the good Fr. Bernas by resorting to the proceedings of the 1986 Constitutional Commission (which often decided weighty matters by a single vote, such as the fact that we now have a presidential form of government and not a parliamentary one!)

Bernas: "The delegates to the 1986 Constitutional Commission did debate on how often a person may be president. Records show that the original draft which came from the committee proposed that "He shall be disqualified from immediate reelection." During the deliberatons on this draft, three alternatives vied for approval: no immediate reelection, absolutely no second election whatsoever, one immediate reelection. The "absolutists" won the vote and the final text came to read as it does now: "The President shall not be eligible for any reelection." The word "any" reflects the sentiment of the "absolutists."

Clearly, the framers of the 1987 Constitution were not unanimous in their view of this question, being divided into at least three camps: those who would forbid only immediate re-election; those who would allow only one re-election; and the "absolutists" who turn out to be not so absolute about limiting a person to a maximum of six years at the helm.

How can Fr. Bernas claim that the provision means "absolutely no second election whatsoever"?

LOOKIT: The Founding Fathers (including Bernas) contemplated the possibility of a Vice President succeeding to the Presidency and then being elected immediately to the same office, a happenstance that has already transpired with Gloria Macapagal Arroyo! Indeed, if Gloria had kept her Rizal Day 2002 promise not to run in the 2004 elections, she would still have been eligible to run for election to the same office of President at any time during her natural life. ERGO, there is no ABSOLUTE PROHIBITION in the 1987 Constitution against a former President running for election to the same office of President, since a real and legal counter-example has already occurred in the case of GMA.

Are the following statements TRUE or FALSE under the 1987 Constitution?

NO INCUMBENT PRESIDENT SHALL BE ELIGIBLE FOR ANY ELECTION TO THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENCY.

NO FORMER PRESIDENT SHALL BE ELIGIBLE FOR ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY.

Both statements are FALSE. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was the incumbent president in 2004 when she ran for and won election to the presidency (how she did it is a different matter altogether not our subject today). Moreover, if she had not run in 2004 as she once vowed, she would still be eligible for election to the Presidency in 2010 or beyond since she would've served only Erap's unexpired term.

In this logical deconstruction, there is one utterly depressing and inexorable conclusion. The 1987 Constitution is not framed to exclude the Incumbent's Advantage since there is a giant loophole in it that allowed a Vice President who merely succeeded to the Presidency of Erap, to take compleat Incumbent's Advantage of her position in 2004 in order to win election to the same office as President!

The 1987 Constitution effectively discriminates against Presidents who are democratically elected into office by forbidding their re-election immediate or otherwise. Yet, it allows "any person" who merely succeeds to the Presidency to be eligible for election to the same office of the Presidency immediately or otherwise!

The distinction between "re-election" and "election to the same office" is really a hollow one with respect to the enjoyment of the Incumbent's Advantage, the removal of which would seem to be the main motivating factor for moving to a single six year term without any immediate re-election.

As Bernas tells it, we see that "no immediate re-election" for the president was the original position of the drafters, being a compromise between the "absolutists" and those who would allow a single re-election. "No immediate re-election" certainly satisfies the need to suppress the Incumbent's Advantage.

IF there are unresolvable ambiguities present in the Constitution, we must be prepared to settle them as POLITICAL QUESTIONS, rather than give in to the tendency of some folks to turn the Constitution into a Bible, to be interpreted and redacted with good intentions the way Davide did [sic!]. But as against such Constitutional carpentry, I much prefer to regard the Constitution as a Social and Political Contract, which ought to be the best evidence of what the Parties are agreeing to do, which is to set up and maintain a democratic system of government for a free and open society that is based on preternatural moral principles of Justice as fairness and Liberty as equality.

Mayors, governors and Congressmen are limited to three consecutive terms of three years each and must stand for election to win each term. Senators and the Vice President may serve up to two consecutive terms of six years each with a single re-election in between allowed. All of these officials get their quotas and limits reset after a hiatus out of office (during which many of them field wives or other placeholders until they can run again).

The President is not eligible for any re-election and serves a single six year term. Could it possibly be that the President is unique among all government officials in being limited to a single term in a given position for life? Why can't a past, non-incumbent president like Cory, FVR or Erap run for President again when there would be no question of an Incumbent's Advantage?

The overthrow of Joseph Estrada in 2001 is usually described by the politically correct as a "military backed popular revolt" even as the Supreme Court ruled in March 2001 that the regime change that occurred on 20 January 2001 was "Constitutional throughout."

But today, in The Last Word on Erap's running again for the Presidency, Founding Father Joaquin Bernas, SJ, says:

Fr. Bernas: "President Joseph Estrada succeeded Ramos in 1992 through an overwhelming popular vote. His tenure was cut short by a Supreme Court decision, although the justices themselves could not find a common supporting reason for concluding that his departure from Malacañang was final and irrevocable."

When a Constitutional Officer, like the President, the Chief Justice or a Comelec Commissioner is impeached by the House, tried AND convicted by the Senate Impeachment Court, there are only two legal penalties that result, namely: (1) immediate removal from public office; and (2) perpetual disqualification from holding public office.

Note that such a verdict and sentence of conviction in a Senate impeachment trial is FINAL and EXECUTORY. It cannot be appealed to the Supreme Court, which has NO jurisdiction whatsoever to consider, affirm or reverse it. Not even Executive Clemency can affect the outcome and punishment in any case of impeachment.

For me, the most profound Constitutional lesson to be learned from Edsa Dos and the case of Joseph Estrada has to do with the principle of the Separation of Powers in the matter of Public Accountability of Constitutional Officers who may only be removed by the process of impeachment.

It is a widely ignored FACT that the process of removing high government officials by the judicial mechanics of impeachment is the sole and exclusive power of the political branch of the Government, namely the House and Senate of the Congress of the Philippines.

ONLY the Congress has NO impeachable officers under the Constitution's Article IX on Accountability of Public Officers.

ALL impeachable officers belong to the the Executive Dept. (President and Vice President); the Judiciary (15 Justices of the Supreme court); or the Constitutional Commissions (Comelec 7, Audit 3, Civil Service 3).

The overthrow of Joseph Estrada in 2001 is the reason, I think, that he is still around. A grave form of injustice was done by one institution, the Supreme Court against another, the Senate, in not upholding the clear SEPARATION OF POWERS in a case of impeachment involving the Presidency. For me, the entire utility of the quantity called Joseph Estrada, is the possible correction of that grave injustice.

The Legal Eagles can say what they want, but the question CAN ERAP RUN AGAIN? is quintessentially a POLITICAL question. All the fancy argumentation and reasoning in the above post can be answered by a single four letter word that the electorate could write into the ballots of 2010 if necessary: ERAP!

In that case, not even Joaquin Bernas or Hilario Davide can command the Spring to rise above the Source! It's the lesson they and the other Edsa Dos Die Hards refuse to learn.

David Brooks thinks that Mike Huckabee is a new kind of evangelical, what he calls "the first ironic evangelical on the national stage." It's true, he has a sense of humor and is not at war with modern culture. Of course the big story out of Iowa is Barack Obama:

"He talks about erasing old categories like red and blue (and implicitly, black and white) and replacing them with new categories, of which the most important are new and old. He seems at first more preoccupied with changing thinking than changing legislation...Obama is changing the tone of American liberalism, and maybe American politics, too."

The Hillary Clinton campaign's immediate reaction to the third place loss in Iowa is found at the Captain's Quarters (though it's naturally full of schadenfreude over there).

The Anchoress thinks it is all baloney and that Iowa has been pimped up but means nothing.

Ah, but Time Magazine's Blog reports that Hillary has been booed at a New Hampshire Democratic party dinner.

So it's on to New Hampshire and the Granite State. Check it out here at the Granite Grok.

A really big roundup of the primary news is at Memeorandum.

Mike Huckabee (31%) tops the GOP Iowa contest as Mitt Romney (23%) concedes. (via NY Times). Among the Democrats, live blogger Kathryn Seelye reports from Des Moines that Barack Obama appears to be pulling away from both John Edwards (whom he is beating in the conservative areas) and Hillary Clinton (whom he is beating everywhere). The De Moines Register has Mr. Obama at 36% while Edwards and Clinton could go into a photo finish, both currently at 31% with 75% of precincts already counted. Hmm, looks like Evans and Novak were spot on yesterday. Glenn Reynolds notes that Fox News has called Iowa for Barack Obama.

UPDATE: The ongoing analysis confirms that Barack Obama has decisively beaten Hillary Clinton in Iowa among women, youth and first time caucus voters. The big story on the GOP side is Mike Huckabee's nine point win over Gov. Mitt Romney, despite being outspent 15 to 1. Pajamas Media has a big roundup of Iowa caucus results and commentary.

SEEN: Mrs. Obama is a tall, willowy, self-assured woman who would not look out of place in a Miss America beauty pageant. Saw her for the first time on CNN this evening with their two daughters as Papa delivered a trademark Obama speech--graceful, restrained but potent in this early victory. Wow! With a $100 million war chest as big or bigger than Hillary's, he will be a formidable candidate in this election.

Dean Raul Pangalangan draws the parallels to the Filipino people and their rulers in the saga of Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan's recent political history. He discovers trepidation. Read it all in Passion for Reason.

The nice folks who write editorials at the Philippine Daily Innuendo appear to be in shock and awe over the Resurrection of Joseph Estrada. Being such good Catholics, this is surely a waking nightmare for them, so swiftly has it happened. One day Erap is convicted of Plunder after being overthrown in a People Power fantasy sequel; then he's suddenly pardoned by GMA. Before they know it, they are headlining his possible retaking of a Presidency stolen with their complicity and unrepentant help. Or the beginnings of an Estrada Dynasty. No wonder they are aghast at his seemingly inexorable march back to the halls of power, either as Kingmaker or King himself in 2010, if not sooner. Erap may do them one better in the matter of People Power. From the political grave they had so assiduously helped to dig for him, he uprises like a Phoenix, barnstorming all over the archipelago, touching base with local political leaders and friends. Having a merrie old time, basking in the apparent good will of most of his countrymen. Perhaps not having run away with a guilty tail between his legs like Marcos or Jocjoc Bolante, won Erap a measure of respect from even his enemies. Today Erap announced he will revive a movie career that also brought him to Malacanang and the summit of power.

What is happening right now is the script of every big movie Erap ever made, in which the lowest point is just before the heroic comeback. This could be hard for the Edsa Dos Die Hards who've never, ever seen through Hilario Davide and are to this day, his worshipful dupes!

PDI still calls the 2001 Supreme Court putsch, "a military backed popular revolt". Yet, ever more perfect hindsight and the cold objectivity of historical distance establishes and confirms that Edsa Dos was coup d'etat -- an extra-Constitutional Presidential regime change engineered by the Vice president and carried out by the Supreme Court Chief Justice and Armed Forced Chief of Staff.

However, GMA's pardon of Joseph Estrada may yet be her undoing. The restoration of Erap's civil and political rights means he could now bring criminal and civil suits against Hilario Davide for mooting and aborting the historic December 2000 Senate Impeachment Trial -- a grave dereliction of duty and betrayal of his oath of affirmation as presiding judge. Davide had no business swearing in the Vice President on 20 January 2001, and I am bone weary of Edsa Dos Diehards using the excuse that it was "to prevent violence" -- when they should say it was to prevent the threatened murder at gunpoint of an incumbent President unless he vacated the Palace to give the impression of vacating the presidency itself.

Erap should have Angie Reyes charged with mutiny, insubordination and coup d'etat for his mutinous and rebellious actions on 19 January 2001. Erap ought to do this in order to re-establish the old fashioned principle that "Crime Does Not Pay" as an antidote to the sheer casuistry of the Supreme Court in how it construed the role of Gen. Angelo T. Reyes in those historic events. The principle that "withdrawal of support" is ok if it succeeds is the Constitutional humbug that is the stuffing of Estrada v. Arroyo (2001).

Oh but that's right. Erap says jail has mellowed him out and he has forgiven his tormentors and those who drove him from office. Maybe Angie and Davide should hope Erap stays away from the demon rhum.

He may also be too busy with politics and movie making.

Today's headlines say Erap is investing in the future of his son, Senate President Pro Tempore, Jinggoy Estrada, who could indeed run for the Vice Presidency with Manny Villar and win with Erap's ample help in the 2010 campaign.

Had Davide reconvened the impeachment court, as duty and reason dictated, Erap would likely have been acquitted. But in the three years he had left, he would've been weaker than a lame duck, and circumspect about any further plunder. The country could easily have survived three more years of Erap. He would've been in the rear view mirror by 2004, with the President succeeding him probably mandated to expunge his memory from the record. Instead, because of Davide's insane junking of the clear and incontrovertible Constitutional mandate to uphold the impeachment process in January 2001, here we now are in January 2008, staring at the prospect of Erap and his brood at the ramparts of power, forever, coz of Davide's dereliction of duty! Never was it truer that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And what a royal road is laid by Chief Justices when they err!

Thanks Justice Davide. You really screwed the pooch good and hard on this one, Your Honor! Thanks to you, now, only God can get rid of Erap.

I'm watching the pre-game show at the Drudge Report as Democrats and Republicans running for President face their first real test with the voters of the Hawkeye State. Evans and Novak predict that Mitt Romney will take the GOP vote followed by Mike Huckabee. Amazingly, Hillary finishes at third for the Dems, while Barack Obama takes Iowa with John Edwards at runner up. Obamarama! Both Hillary and Obama have raised over $100 million in campaign contributions and may slug it out all the way to the Convention. I agree with Andrew Sullivan. Gotta fall in love all over again with this crazy democratic idea. Check out Christopher Hitchens at Slate on the Iowa Scam.

The Moro Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has been having a protracted wet dream about a 1000-barangay "Bangsamoro Juridical Entity" for its potentates-in-waiting to rule over. The proposed BJE would even absorb bitter rival Nur Misuari's ARMM domain, a proviso that guarantees a condition of permanent fratricidal strife between the two liberation fronts.

But President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has made what the MILF website beguilingly describes as "a 360 degree U-turn" and rails that the government has reneged on previously agreed upon "consensus points" in regards to the pivotal ancestral domain issue. It seems a minor Technicality has arisen--it's called the Philippine Constitution--which requires popular plebiscites to approve such a surrender of territory to the multifarious "Liberation Fronts" holding Mindanao hostage for generations.

But instead of a Fiefdom on a Silver Platter, President Arroyo now offers her partners in the peace process a "Bangsamoro Federal State" for a homeland. Faced with the Constitutional principle of democratic self-determination of peoples, the MILF New Years Day statement is disdainful and dismissive, and predicts "a grim year in 2008 for the peace process" and hints darkly of hardliners and imminent war. Since it is precisely those "hardliners" that are the future of the jihad in Mindanao, I don't see why we should agree to the restoration of the old slave trading Maguindanao Confederacy.

Here's another charming turn of phrase from the Moro Moro Islamic Liberation Front after hearing of the government's new proposal to tie the Mindanao peace process to chacha:

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has received with cold shoulders offer of the government to resort to charter change next year to get the peace talks moving again by eying to set up a federal state in Mindanao for the Bangsamoro people. “

Having held Mindanao hostage for over a generation of deadly moro moro as MNLF, MILF, lost commands and Abu Sayyaf, they once more threaten organized violence unless given the ransom of land and power they lust after and demand. Since Dr. Jekyll boycotted the scheduled 15th GRP-MILF Exploratory Talks in Kuala Lumpur last December 15, the sounds emanating from the Luwaran official website are those of Mr. Hyde.

But can the President perhaps get chacha out of this moro moro by tying the Mindanao peace process to the idea of Federalism? Then sneak in some really important amendment, like term limits for Presidents?

Ancestral Domain or Bangsamorostan?

We Are All Abu Sayyaf Now

Laughable Textbooks Errors in Crucial Supreme Court Decisions

Are Tagalogs, Pampangos, Ilocanos, Cebuanos "Indigneous Peoples" of the Philippines?

Senator Antonio Trillanes achieved a great gigue of mischief with the so-called Manila Peninsula caper. He was able to create an utterly novel but dangerous situation in which the police and military authorities were just bound to do something wrong! It is ironic that the Media folks involved got more angry at the cops than Trillanes, considering that it was the latter who had gambled with his and their lives. I don't agree with Maria Ressa that the detention of the media people who refused several police ultimatums to vacate the premises during the standoff was a "Constitutional violation". It was Tough Love for journalist delinquents who were playing along with Trillanes in a deadly game of "Chicken" with the police. We are all lucky Trillanes decided he is not quite ready for martyrdom.

Luckily, the government did not err in the direction of a devastating bloodbath. But the police did manage to make the mistake of detaining some fifty television and radio personalities, reporters, photographers and camera men some of whom they even “hogtied” with plastic tie-locs and herded in buses to Camp Bagong Diwa. (Now how smart was that Mistah Polissmann?).

Trillanes’ clumsy and laughable attempt at fomenting a military withdrawal of support and regime change from another luxury Makati hotel amounted to lil more than a disturbance of the peace. But he did manage to create a Press Freedom controversy against the government that has turned Maria Ressa of ABSCBN News and several dozen other media personnel into his veritable spokespersons and defenders and actual participants in the News. I think that it is highly irregular and even disturbing when journalists become the News through actions they have clearly undertaken of their own free will and indiscretion. It is a sign that there is something unethical or unprofessional going on.

Trillanes can justly be accused of an essential concupiscence when he put innocent (if foolish) media people and civilians in harm’s way—himself and a small coterie of fellow desperadoes, his six or seven leftist civilian supporters, and by far the largest body of human shields, the fifty or so broadcast media personalities and journalists, two reporters from the Philippine Daily Innuendo, and a horde of photographers and impersonators. We must not forget the innocent bystanders, hotel staff and guests. Trillanes was playing a dangerous and reckless game of “Chicken” with the police and military authorities with all of the above interposed between them in the middle of the roadway!

Still at the very heart of this debate, as it was in the Philippine Senate Executive Session Leak controversy, is the role of the Mass Media in events and processes that involve national and human security elements. In particular, there appear to be radically erroneous notions about the moral priority and just ranking of the rights and duties of citizens and institutions. I have considered this complex issue in The Right to Life Has Priority Over the Right to Know.

It's just not right that what the Manila Pen incident has come to is strife between the police and the media. All this hand wringing over dangers to democracy as a result of how the Press was handled by the police is so much bathetic disingenuity when one considers the lawless and malicious nature of Trillanes errant and outrageous behavior. It is Messianic putschists like Trillanes who are the real danger to democracy because he is willing to squander the opportunity the electorate handed him in May. He mistakes his democratic mandate for a license to make a fool of himself and others.