I swear, you can't make this shit up. Department of Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales just designated pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao “as special assistant to the secretary of the Department of Justice in intelligence matters.”

(Cue the jokes about how no one really ought to look to Pacquiao for intelligence matters.)

I know that this is a largely ceremonial position, but isn't it funny if Manny Pacquiao really were a special agent, and Gonzales really expected him to foil terrorism in Mindanao? Imagine Pacman tracking down al-Qaeda operatives smuggling ammunition into his native Sarangani province, which Abu Sayyaf is starting to infiltrate. Manny Pacquiao would be like a cross between Rocky Balboa, Bruce Lee, and Jack Bauer.

(Hey, I think I just wrote the treatment for Pacquiao's next movie!)

As crazy as that sounds though, Raul Gonzales just might be batshit enough to go for that idea.

The Inquirer's Patricia Evangelista listed the evidence that Gonzales might be a certifiable loon:

On the day Fernando Poe Jr.’s widow Susan Roces launched a tirade demanding that President Macapagal-Arroyo step down, the good secretary was asked by the media on possible charges against Roces. Raul Gonzalez, with his typical smug sneer, called Roces a “griping widow” whose late husband was clearly not destined to be president. However, he forgave her moment of weakness, after all, she was “too beautiful to be sent to jail.”

On former President Cory Aquino’s renewed call for Ms Arroyo to resign, Gonzalez commented that instead of trying to fix the country’s political situation, the former president should fix her controversial daughter’s life first. When asked whether the administration is monitoring the former president, Gonzalez said, “I think there is no need to monitor Cory Aquino because she’s also busy monitoring her own daughter.”

On the Subic Base rape case, Gonzalez proclaimed his biases from the beginning, and went so far as to imply that young Nicole “imagined” the rape. Even before the case went to trial, Gonzalez had said he wanted the charges against three of the four accused to be downgraded, but that he felt constrained to include them in the rape charge to “appease the mob.”

On the University of the Philippines, he decided, suddenly and without any seeming stimulus, to upbraid the institution for producing “dissenters and naked runners.” These same protesters, he claimed, were ungrateful whelps wasting taxpayers’ money with no sense of duty to the State and with little conception of national interest.

On Julia Campbell’s murder, he said she was careless for somehow managing to get bludgeoned to death and buried in a shallow mountain grave. Gonzalez said Campbell might have become careless and could have courted trouble when she decided to take a walk in a remote mountain area all alone. “She was a little irresponsible,” he said.

On the allegation that he bribed 18 Iloilo village chiefs with an offer of P10,000 each if they would deliver a 12-0 sweep for Team Unity candidates in their respective barangays, he claimed it was not bribery, only a prize. “As far as I’m concerned, I haven’t done anything wrong.” He also said he could afford to back his promise because it would “just be equal to one harvest from my wife’s poultry farm.” He was not running, he said, it was merely election strategy. There was probably going to be some nut out there who would file a case against him. “There are many nuts in this country; more than the coconuts there are other nuts.”