IN THE ANCIENT magical arts, alchemy involved the use of myriad substances blended together in order to produce a special potion that witches and wizards use in their tradecraft. It is believed at times that using invisible ingredients can produce something out of nothing. That is, something visible out of things invisible. At least. Today, political journalism in the Philippines has a way of conjuring things from thin air. Sometimes to the shaking heads of readers who felt aghast at such violation of what is rational versus the propagandist slant in newsmaking. When senior Supreme Court associate justices had been bypassed in the appointment of Associate Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno as the new Chief Justice, attendance in the flag-raising ceremony every Monday seems to transform from a mundane routine in the High Court into an exercise "abundant" with political interpretations; a politico-alchemical conjuring, so to say. Should the absence of certain justices
Keeping Issues to Its Core