Chrizo

The real hoax is the claim that a scientific debate exists about the reality of climate change. It is promoted by organizations that benefit from our current energy choices and groups that are opposed to any regulation whatsoever, even the most sensible safeguards that help protect our children’s health.

The hoaxers claim climate scientists are “in it for the money,” a ludicrous proposition as pointed out by Jon Koomey. Dr. Koomey used his expertise in mathematical modeling to study the economic impacts of climate change for two decades at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. If Koomey and his colleagues were in it for the money they would have taken their analytic expertise to Wall Street long ago, where their salaries would have been five to 10 times what they can make working for the government.

The hyped rhetoric around this issue is an attempt to convince Americans that accepting the scientific evidence will require taking actions inimical to our shared values of liberty, freedom, community and entrepreneurship.

But one need look no further than the studies of America’s military and intelligence officials who understand how disruptive human-caused climate change could be to our nation’s interests both at home and abroad (in 2009 the CIA established a Center on Climate Change and National Security). Putting our head in the sand about climate change is a sure way to undermine American liberty, economic prosperity and national security. Of all the alterative paths before us to address this problem, doing nothing to reduce the threat of serious climate change is a dangerous and expensive option.

From his perch as acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, DeMarco oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-owned mortgage behemoths that collectively control about half of all home loans in the land. What he does shapes both the national housing market and the ability of troubled borrowers to hang on to their homes. What he has been been doing lately has been so unhelpful that Democratic lawmakers and grassroots advocacy groups are properly demanding his ouster.

DeMarco steadfastly refuses to allow Fannie and Freddie to help distressed homeowners by writing off principal balances on their mortgages. This has ensured that tens of millions of borrowers remain “underwater,” meaning they owe the banks more than their homes are worth — a status that has an alarming tendency to portend foreclosure. His refusal is based on logic that is both elegantly simple and tragically flawed: He is responsible for cleaning up the books at Fannie and Freddie, so he is against spending money.

If DeMarco were fire chief and your house became engulfed in flames, you could forget about calling 911. By his reasoning, the taxpayer would be best served by keeping the fire engines in the station, lest they get damaged in the line of duty. It would not matter whether the flames licking your windows were the result of your recklessness or the product of an explosion at, say, the methamphetamine lab down the street. He would not run up the municipal water bill by saving your block.

Mudslinging is commonplace with politicians, not Chief Justices. The Court he leads is considered the “weakest branch,” holding neither the power of the purse nor the might of the sword but armed only with the wisdom of its words and the moral sway of its conscience.

For this reason, a justice is required to be of “proven competence, integrity, probity and independence.” Probity, that quality of having strong moral principles, honesty and decency, is fundamentally incompatible with slinging mud; on the other hand, probity is fundamentally compatible with slinging truth—even if, as it often does, the truth hurts.

Section 2 of RA 1379 explicitly states that “whenever any public officer or employee has acquired during his incumbency an amount of property which is manifestly out of proportion to his salary as such public officer or employee and to his other lawful income and the income from legitimately acquired property, said property shall be presumed prima facie to have been unlawfully acquired. x x x”

The elements which must concur for this prima facie presumption to apply are:
(1) the offender is a public officer or employee;
(2)he must have acquired a considerable amount of money or property during his incumbency; and
(3)said amount is manifestly out of proportion to his salary as such public officer or employee and to his other lawful income and the income from legitimately acquired property.

More than anything, the impeachment court is an attempt at accountability, to take account of men who are invincible for the sake of those who are not. The court’s power emanates not from the people, but from the court itself, from the faith of the public who live in fear and awe of gavels and robes. Once that faith is shaken, even the most formidable of justices cannot hand down decisions and expect to be believed. Bang the drums, start up the band, send in the clowns.

The impeachment court is meant to restore that awe. It is public, it is open to scrutiny, it is to be a display not so much of the national circus, but a demonstration of the grandest of democratic principles: the public will. The people elected the senator-judges, the rules make no exceptions, and the logic is that no man is too powerful to refuse a just accounting.

This is what the prosecutors forget every time they discredit Corona. They are not there to destroy a man by simply calling him a criminal, a liar and a thief, they are there to prove it in the clearest and most irreproachable way possible that this man by virtue of his sins has no right to run the nation’s highest court. The whole grandstanding lot of spokespersons and lawyers may win the 2013 elections by virtue of their prettily knotted ties, but they do nothing for the country by their sniping and retracting. So what, they ask, if they arranged the articles of impeachment wrong? So what if they declared the wrong totals, so what if the language is vague and the statements of assets and liabilities do not include their legendary 45 properties? The truths they claim depend on how they legitimize these truths in the face of an 82-year-old courtroom veteran who plays the media with the slickness of a Casanova.

It has to do with achievements in defiling institutions upon which our democracy stands. Of our tripartite system, because the judiciary is not periodically answerable to an electorate and is thus insulated from such self-cleansing mechanisms as elections, it enjoys a relative degree of perpetuity. Defile the judiciary and you perpetually defile democracy.

Fortunately, the Constitution affords us a singular remedy—impeachment.

The face-off we now see re-calibrates our separation of powers and restores the executive’s proper place as the source of leadership. Since 1986, the fall of the dictatorship has fostered a knee-jerk bias against executive power and in favor of judicial checks and balances. But this has led to government by stalemate, the primacy of procedure over results, where due process is misunderstood as endless process.
This is the best time to correct that. Cory didn’t want to; it was too soon after Marcos. Fidel Ramos preferred to do it behind-the-scenes, efficiently but not institutionally. Erap took to rhetoric, called them “hoodlums in robes” but didn’t stay long enough to disrobe them. Gloria Arroyo alone had the gumption to flex executive muscle upfront; alas she possessed Machiavellian virtù but not true virtue. And comes now Noynoy, riding the crest of popularity for his anti-corruption campaign.

MANILA, Philippines (2nd UPDATE) - Police served on Friday night the arrest warrant for former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo issued by a Pasay trial court judge who found probable cause against her for electoral sabotage.

The warrant was served inside her room at the St. Luke’s Medical Center in Taguig City where she is confined.

“Katatapos lang po namin i-serve,” said Senior Superintendent James Bucayu.

Former first gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, their family, and some members of the former Arroyo Cabinet were present during the serving of the arrest warrant, according to police.

The Pampanga lawmaker will not be brought out of the hospital as of Friday night because of her illness, Bucayu said.

She is now considered under the custody of the Southern Police District, he added.

Policemen have been stationed outside her room and in key areas of the hospital, Bucayu said.

He said they coordinated with Arroyo’s lawyer, who waived off the reading of her rights.

Arroyo will not be brought out of the hospital and her formal booking, which includes fingerprinting, will be done at the hospital Saturday.

Bucayu said that the former President’s family may just provide a photo for her mugshot.