A Fire! Aim! Ready! Administration

IWAS at the Bureau of Immigration last Monday. I was to assist a client who had gone there, twice, to get permission to travel, to no avail. He is a seaman accused in a support case, allowed by the court to travel, on our motion to lift the hold-departure got splendid cooperation, I was told of the lowered morale of workers who used to get more—thanks to Commissioner Miriam DefensorSantiago’s creative innovation in the public interest—but are now getting just a third of it. Miriam’s policy has apparently been shunted aside by Budget Secretary Ben Diokno, who seems to prioritize the armed services, as ordered by the commander in chief, Prez Digong, who keeps stroking those with arms.

There had been resignations at the BI, I was told. It is human nature to take it harder when one loses what one has been used to than when one seems Secretary Ben is under the gun to produce more and more dough for soldiers and policemen. And it is said that whatever Lolo wants, Lolo gets. (Lolo Digong may not want to lessen be built away from centers of population, true apparently only in MOA.)

No higher calling

seems to have disappeared when Harry Roque appeared. Sal, a virtual

like certain human rights victims that Sal and I used to assist during the dark years, and who the regime does not seem to care a whit for today. The few of us who do care are even blasted by certain critics for not joining the administration’s powerful

choir, in charivari. In the time of Macoy, no higher calling there was we perceived than human rights lawyering, now facing massive governmental marginalization again. Tough. And lawyers are not of much use in the Bigger and Better Houses, either.

Why bother to investigate further after a talkative committee chair has expressed his opinion on one’s liabil probes may not be in the national interest. Why not wait until after the If a child given Dengvaxia dies, we should let doctors decide the cause of death. We must avoid the fallacy of “After this, therefore because of this,” is fallacious, no matter what Doctors Dante Jimenez, may say.

go to him (or any of his, assuming he has lapse in taking on Erap’s case in 2001, which I had thought was not for plundering, but philandering, maybe our most popular national sport, led today by Digong

Why bother with a twochild policy when we cannot enforce a one- Meanwhile, his Veep, Leni Robredo, has been told her friends and supporters cannot support her defense against Bongbong by paying directly what is sought to be collected by the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET).

Not personal donation to Leni

Investments in democracy should be protected and nurtured. A protest involves ascertaining and maintaining the people’s choice and should arguably be covered by the spirit of my 1991 amendment to R.A. 7166 (Sec. 13), making political donations non-taxable for providing informed democratic choices.

There is no personal donation or gift I see going to Leni, which may be banned by PD 46 and RA 6713, interdicting gifts to government personnel (and a gift to an is a gift to The donation can be paid directly to the government, with not a red cent passing egocentrically, to protect and preserve her victory as the people’s will, and her vow of good governance. As Brandeis said, if we must guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold. This apothegm we need in the case of PNoy and his unrelenting detractors.

I try to teach political and constitutional law. On top of being a naturalborn citizen, a registered voter, literate, of age, and a resident, I only add that one must not be a nuisance candidate. (One may have been born through a cesarean operation or be half-Filipino, half-Filipina and still qualify as a citizen, natural born.) Infallibility is not required. No one is perfect save those named Perfecto/a. We all err.

Presidents and topmost leaders answer to history, not to any court, for good-faith lapses. On McArthur and Emperor Hirohito, for instance, the former continues to be praised and dispraised for his decision not to Old Soldier on April 11, 1951, when I was a Makati Elem grader. Civilian supremacy was upheld over the mili seniority, as a rule.

No seniority tradition in judiciary

In the US there is no tradition on seniority in the judiciary. Its current Chief Justice, John Roberts, became CJ, at 50 in 2005, as an outsider in the US SC. (Prez Cory gave me, at 47, a signed Supreme Court appointment in January 1987, which I, an outsider, declined; my mantra—public service is its own reward. Many were far more deserving. The appointment was not my star to follow. Human rights lawyering was, and no higher calling I could see then for a member of the bar.)

Holmes’s non-appointment as seniority. But, an Associate like him, may be better remembered than CJs, like Roger Taney, a Catholic who authored the dreadful Dred Scott decision, ruling that blacks were chattels. (Look at how Associate Justice JBL Reyes is revered today.)

Tradition, they see in Spain,

a social vice that has become incurable.

Boo Chanco, et al., very correctly see and lament the intramurals as something that should not have gone out of the Faura family. A justice’s duty is to decide cases; collegiality may hamper and not conduce to admin testimony may have added a delicious frisson to the hearings but detracts from their core function of deciding loooong-pending cases.

The justices know that at least one of them regularly feeds our awesome - tial stuff, but don’t seem to be bothered. I call Jomar the 16th justice. This regular leak the SC should address to ward off decay as standards seem to go down everywhere.

The impeachment bar has been lowered, it is said, because of what happened to CJ Rene Corona. From where I sat, he had it coming being a post-midnight appointee on May 17, 2010, the day when his predecessor, CJ Rey Puno had to step down. PNoy had clearly won. For a smooth transition, GMA should not have thrown a monkey wrench at it. The appointment was neither or in my view, and I labelled

appointment by an Prez. The post-midnight appointment should not have been not undertaker, whose task is to it as an