MAKING A MOUNTAIN OUT OF MOLEHILLS

With all due respect, I honestly believe those thirty or so complainants who have sued Sen. Tito Sotto III for alleged plagiarism are making a mountain out of a molehill.

They call themselves "free thinkers."  No, they are not.  For me, they are more of a group that delights to unknowingly display too narrow a mental landscape whenever their egos are hurt.  I have always had the gut feeling that the case is just their own desperate way to get even with Sotto, whose recent privilege speeches have indeed enlightened the public as to why the RH Bill had been junked by already several past Congresses.  In the looming happenstance that it is again rejected, it should be due to to the faults of no one else but these complainants'.  For one, not one of them has intelligently challenged Sotto's arguments so far;
for another, the plagiarism case unnecessarily shortens the already fast diminishing session days of the lawmakers before they adjourn for the forthcoming elections.  Indeed, lawyer Romulo Macalintal and the group called Responsible Internet Users for Social Empowerment (Cyber.RISE) were right in separately positing there are so many important matters the Senate may more prudently spend the people's money for, rather than hear an ethics case for an alleged plagiarism that is deemed "baseless" from the very outset. 

Truly baseless because, as far as I humbly know, plagiarism validly exists only when one publicly quotes the ideas or writings of another and passes them as his own.  For heaven's sake, let us be a bit objective.  Suppose in a speech or a published article, one speaker ir writer says: "words are like leaves, where they most abound, much fruit of the sense beneath is rarely found," without acknowledging its original source (Was it Alexander Pope? I'm not really sure!), is there plagiarism? On the other hand, did not Sotto time and again clarify in his speeches that the arguments he had been articulating were not his own?  I really find it amusing that it had to be a group of bloggers -- in turn followed by certain free-thinking kuno academicians and lawyers -- not really the true authors of the ideas Sotto had lifted from the blogs, who had filed the plagiarism suit.  If I may use some metaphors, isn't that quite laughably unlike "a whip to the horse and the cow complains?"  Moreover, I hate to say this but I must: the complaint, so lengthily presented, and the quotation from Pope I earlier cited truly fits each other to a "T".

Chances are, nevertheless, the ethics case against Sotto may still prosper.  As my gut feel has earlier suggested, the case is just the complainants' last-ditch personal vendetta against Sotto for sending their pet bill into a moribund state.  It now seems it would no longer matter to them if the bill finally dies in due course -- not one of them could so far refute Sotto's arguments, anyway -- for as long as Sotto is sanctioned. For sure, given that the bill's principal proponent in the Senate and the chair of the Senate ethics committee that will soon hear and judge Sotto's fate happen to be siblings, can one plus one amount to anything else but two?  I mean, blood is thicker than water, the old saying goes  -- God, knowing not who first said it, am I plagiarizing?  Incidentally, the rather dim ending that I portend awaits Sotto in this case may just be one of  the many unfortunate circumstances we should expect from the political dynasties in our midst and times, most particularly inside a collegial body like the Philippine Senate.