INURED to being made to believe what’s impossible can happen if onli in da Pilipins and, good grief, twice even when once in God’s will is one too many – I must nonetheless firmly refuse to be appalled at the good Senator-Judge Joker Arroyo’s remark at the impeachment trial last Thursday.

Absent even the merest quip about it in the media, notwithstanding the runaway quarterbacking on the seventh day of Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona’s impeach trial, with all due respect to the erudite Joker, I’d stick to just being baffled, not to say cravenly safe below his line of fire, if and when he opts to retaliate.

Itals mine, here’s the major broadsheet quite at length of the Bicolano senator-judge’s egregious discomfort over the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s investigation parallel to CJ’s impeachment trial:

“I get a little bothered by that. I’m not saying it’s wrong or right, but a twin move against one person, here in the Senate through impeachment and another one in the Internal Revenue, through investigation using the powers of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, that is very potent.”

Alright, since neither right nor wrong, neither should the power applied behind the CJ’s impeachment and tax payment probe be at the full force of the law? No, I do not think that’s envelope Arroyo is pushing, whether in the first or second instance, if you get the drift, Jose.

“We don’t want the public to think that the forces of government are being used … It sends a bad signal to the public … That is my concern.” All up there between the senator-judge’s shoulders even as he admitted being worried about the consequences looming large and darkly on Corona.

It’s been close to four decades since Joker’s dragon years in the parliament of the streets, a great deal of fire in the belly fiercely expanded for his struggle for democracy and the rule of law. Pray, Jose, the dragon from Bicolandia is not only emblematic today.

Regrets

Penultimate to the lines ending his “Life on the Road” novel, CBS News anchor Charles Kuralt wrote:

“It was five o’clock in the morning. The first light of day was appearing in the gray sky. People were going back into the hotel and trudging up the stairs.

“I was weary and lonely. She was still smiling. She touched my hand. I kissed her chastely on the cheek, went up and got my bag and walked down the street in the drizzle, looking for breakfast.

“That was 30 years ago. Harry Golden, the old editor and author who lived in my hometown, told me when I was a young newspaper reporter:  ‘When you get to be my age, sonny, all you ever think about are the women you could have gone to bed with and didn’t’.”

“I laughed then.”

I called up Zip and read it to him. “Lord, we could both use a drink,” he said. We clinked glasses thankfully for having been spared the regrets.