At the End of the Day

ONE OF THE MOST difficult Filipino mindset to change is that of entitlement without accountability.  Certain congressmen lately howled at the administration for requiring them to submit details of their projects for the 2013 budget. If you think of it, there is nothing wrong with that. If a lawmaker has projects for his district, what’s the big deal with submitting details? Are these details not needed before any projects get accepted by the congressman himself for the district? It is proper procedure that a study of a need first be taken before any project to meet that need be considered for financing using the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) allotted to the congressman. So a valid project must involve a valid study to justify the funding. These study documents are simply what can be submitted to the Palace to justify the projects. The recent hullabaloos however tell us a lot of things. First, certain congressmen believed that their PDAF is their own personal fund that

THE MORO ISLAMIC Liberation Front (MILF) boldly declared that Muslims be allowed to run their government even "if they go to hell by their own making, so be it." I go for a lasting peace in Muslim Mindanao; but I have serious doubts on real peace when these armed Muslim leaders cannot accept the fact of life that Mindanao is no longer a Muslim territory after Muslim settlers took the land from the Lumads in the prehistoric Philippines. I came from Zamboanga, and grew there. Despite MILF's claim of representing the dream of Muslims in Mindanao, I have serious doubts if the leaders are merely using this separatist slogan for their own aggrandizement. Look at ARMM under MNLF's Nur Misuari who had nothing to show for the tax shares it received from the government. And reports had it Misuari kept a huge sum from this money for his own accounts. So I have so much reservations on the lasting peace settlement with the MILF can bring. First, how much really of our Muslim si

THE SECOND DEFINITION of the intransitive verb, "abort," in Merriam-Webster dictionary runs as "to become checked in development so as to degenerate or remain rudimentary." One characteristic of "development," aside from being an act or a result, is that it is also a process. Any process begins at the point of initiation, but not the generation of an idea, or the planning stage. And "rudimentary" inarguably means "of a primitive kind," or being in its fundamental form. This gives us a more fundamental definition of the term "abortion" as the "termination of the process of giving life to a human being through a natural, biological and developmental process of conception into a child ready for birth." Now, this definition is entirely different from the standard medical definition of "abortion." Merriam-Webster's standard definition of "abortion" is "the termination of pregnancy after, acc

SHOULD SENATE BILL 2497 becomes law, the Upper Chamber would once again distinguish itself as a bastion of rationality and moral discernment in a Congress that has been confused over whose right must be protected the most--that of the mother, or that of the unborn child? The mother bill House Bill 4244, sponsored by Representative Edcel Lagman, believes that mothers must be protected with the protection of the unborn child given only a lip service. While Section 3(i) recognizes that "abortion is illegal and punishable by law," it does, in a twist of linquistic doubletalk, not support the idea that such is a serious break of the law; and instead proposed that "all women needing care for post-abortion complications shall be treated and counseled." It is like giving treatment and counseling to a serial killer after murdering a child, and then simply saying, "You may go now. Just come back to us for a regular check on your wounds." HB4244 is an all-mother bil

I AM LOOKING for proof otherwise but found none. Thus, I still fear that a government, and its laws, detached from the moral teachings of the Ancient Christian Church, the Roman Catholic Church, will eventually become a government who does not believe in a good God, and even takes a dangerous course of governing its affairs based on the often tainted and self-serving motives of those who interprete its laws. In the United States of America, such Godless government policies and laws have spurned the ghastly pro-abortion law through the historic decision of the Supreme Court of the United States on 22 January 1973 on the case of Roe v. Wade. Writing the ruling, Justice Harry Blackmun asserted that the "right of privacy... is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." One of the two dissenting justices to the ruling, Senior Associate Justice Byron White wrote: "I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution

AT THE ENTRANCE of the Libingan ng mga Bayani (Cemetery of the Heroes), you will see written on a black stone a statement that says,  I do not know the dignity of his birth, but I do know the glory of his death , to honor the memory of those who were buried there . The quote came from Gen. Douglas McArthur who came in 1960 to pay his respects to fallen comrades in World War II. It excuses the circumstances of their birth, but it honors the glory of their death. When first established in May 1947 the Libingan  was known as the Philippine Memorial Cemetery. Most of those buried in the cemetery are the defenders of Bataan, Corregidor and other battlefields of World War II in the country. On 27 October 1954, President Ramon Magsaysay renamed it to Libingan ng mga Bayani in order to emphasize the great honors that those who will be buried there deserve to get. A  website of Corregidor Island described the intention of the Libingan : "a fitting tribute to gallant Filipino men and wome

AT TIMES THE application of law can be so shortsighted it can lose the essence of why laws are made in the first place. Justice Secretary Leila De Lima is making a big deal on the mystery surrounding the travel document  that allowed Senator Panfilo Lacson to get back into the country from Hong Kong after 13 months in hiding. Of course, it is understandable that the Philippine Passport Act may have been violated. But the context of that potential offense was never to commit a crime but to avoid getting incarcerated for innocence of a crime that may have been made an excuse to persecute a critic of the past administration. If we understand a man who killed someone on self-defense, cannot we do the same on a person who wants to protect his freedom and the honor of the office he is serving? I would agree with PNoy that getting deeper into the matter in order to put a legal claim on Lacson would be a waste of resources. It is tantamount to a law which had lost its spirit--that spirit tha