Litmus Test

Why abortion? Why now? With bishops vowing to deny Communion to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, abortion has reemerged as a litmus test for Catholic politicians. In the face of complaints that they are unfairly targeting Democrats, church leaders last week said they were right to spotlight abortion because the issue has always been foremost on their public agenda. Camden Bishop Joseph A. Galante, who said last month that he would not give McGreevey Communion, recently described abortion as an "absolute wrong" that gives it paramount status among Catholic life issues.

During the 1987 Block Bork Campaign, many of us had had enough - enough of increasing judicial opposition to progressive trends, enough of serious encroachments on the gains minority Americans had made during the past decade, and more than enough of the Reagan litmus test on abortion. A year and a half later, the litmus test is rearing its ugly head again. Because he had taken a pro-choice position in the past, Attorney General Richard Thornburgh must have felt it necessary to pass the litmus test by requesting that the U.S. Supreme Court hear the anti-abortion Missouri Webster case.

On Wednesday, Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor oversaw the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state Supreme Court building. Pryor believes that the court ruling ordering the removal was incorrect. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court building itself has depictions of the Ten Commandments. The court opens its sessions with an invocation of God. And we know the other familiar elements of state-sponsored religion in America, from the chaplains in both houses of Congress to "In God We Trust" on the coinage.

If the ideological opportunists get away with this one, we may as well abandon hope - democracy, in the language of the flower children, sucks. They bring in Prof. Laurence Tribe all the way from Frankfurt, West Germany, to tell us why President Reagan should not nominate to the Supreme Court a judicial scholar whose views of the responsibility of the court are similar to those of Ronald Reagan. And here is what Tribe comes up with: Waal, he says, it's this way. Up until now, the court has been balanced between conservatives and liberals.

The ink was barely dry on the Constitution when the U.S. Senate voted in 1795 on whether to appoint John Rutledge as the next chief justice of the United States. A distinguished son of the Revolution and the chief justice in his home state of South Carolina, Rutledge had the pedigree and the experience, never mind the backing of that most notable founding father, President George Washington. But he didn't have the votes. The Senate rejected the nomination largely because of Rutledge's public stand against the Jay Treaty, a controversial pact that averted a war with Great Britain.

SOME analogies simply don't work. While Carol Towarnicky ("Wrong Kind of Islamo-awareness," Nov. 1) makes a valid point that demagoguery in any form is wrong and that we can't argue that because some in a group are evil then all are evil, her reference to the Catholic martyrs of Spain as "for-real fascists" is offensive. There were almost 10,000 Catholic religious men and women executed by a communist regime because they wouldn't renounce their faith, a litmus test for loyalty to the besieged government.

Sen. Arlen Specter - what's left of him - has weathered the storm of conservative protest to secure the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Anyone who has followed his career should have bet on his survival. But Specter may have paid for this coveted post with his presumed independence. The ugliness began two weeks ago, after Republicans increased their majority in the Senate by picking up four seats in the election. Specter dared to point out that Democrats still had the ability to block President Bush's judicial nominees through the use of a filibuster, and said he expected the President to keep that in mind when nominating judges.

Thanks to Lawrence Braico of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs ("Gun law's flaws," Dec. 5) for finally clarifying why pro-gunners are so vehement in opposition to limits on packing heat at will. Gun-lobby rhetoric is awash in false patriotism and incorrect reading of constitutional principle, and Braico didn't spare us either. But in his rambling and parental letter taking Gov. Rendell to task for signing legislation enabling law enforcement to remove guns from domestic abusers, Braico defined what really motivates pro-gunners to fight against every limit on gun possession or use: emotion.

Want a job on Capitol Hill under the new Republican regime? Join the line at the clearinghouse being operated by the House Republican Study Committee and fill out an application that asks whether you consider yourself conservative, moderate or liberal. Then flip to the Issues Questionnaire, which seeks your views on such topics as abortion, prayer in schools, and gays in the military. And finally, using a plus or minus, indicate whether you are in "general agreement" or "general disagreement" with a series of organizations and politicians, including: the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Right to Life Committee, the National Rifle Association, Vice President Gore, Sen. Jesse Helms (R., N.C.)

THE PRO-LIFE forces that seek to derail Arlen Specter's elevation to chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee may be self-defeating. Specter is arguably the only individual sufficiently respected on both sides of the aisle to marshal the votes necessary to pass the president's picks. Remember, despite his own pro-choice views, it was the Philadelphia lawyer who got Clarence Thomas confirmed. How he became embroiled in this controversy is worthy of explanation. The day after the election, Specter held a press conference, and the Associated Press' Lara Jakes Jordan asked him a question about the role he intended to play on Supreme Court nominations.

TERRELL OWENS desperately wants back on an NFL team. However, it seems NFL teams could not care less. The former All-Pro wide receiver ran drills and worked out (no situps this time) in front of ESPN and NFL Network cameras yesterday, but not a single representative from any of the league's 32 franchises made an appearance. Wait, not even a towel boy? Man, that's cold-blooded. Don't call it a comeback - well, maybe in this case, given the circumstances - but T.O. is out to prove his 37-year-old left knee, which underwent months of rehabilitation following surgery, is still good and ready to go through the rigors of an NFL season.

THEY CITE his feet as a reason he might be something special and his hands as a reason he might not. To Villanova big man Mouphtaou Yarou, though, the litmus test is in the game's language, the where, when and how that decides his impact on a game far more than those sometimes clumsy mitts of his. "To me, it's being part of a team," he was saying before practice this week. "To play as a team during the season. Soccer is a team sport, but you don't have to play as a team on defense the way you do here.

IN LARGE part because of its stern rules and regulations, soccer has remained one of the purest sports on the planet. There is little in the way of modern technology that FIFA - soccer's world governing body - has allowed to make the game more exact. Only in the past 15 years or so has the implementation of officials wearing headsets and digital stoppage timers come into play. With the hopes of keeping soccer a "human" game, the human element of making mistakes has become not only evident but rampantly displayed repeatedly by this World Cup. Blown calls for goals, offsides and other infractions have soured the taste of a game still criticized by Americans for lacking in excitement, despite the successes of our men's and women's national teams and the ever-budding success of Major League Soccer.

Pick a car. Any car. Yesterday, while the snow outside continued to mount toward a paralyzing 28.5 inches, visitors inside the Philadelphia Auto Show could slide into the driver's seat of any snazzy, shiny, leather-seated, chrome-gleaming, torqued-up vehicle they wanted. Without waiting in line. The ratio of dealer "presenters" (think significantly blond, short skirts or tight slacks) to attendees was, as show director Kevin Mazzucola said with a shrug, "much higher than normal.

The NFL revealed the identity of the musical halftime performers for the Super Bowl last week, and, in about two months, it will also reveal the identities of the teams that will play the game. In both cases, fans not paying attention might be tempted to ask, "the Who?" The game will wrap itself around a mini-show by the surviving veterans from one of the most venerable English Rock League franchises. Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, along with whatever members of the practice squad are activated, will get 12 or 13 minutes to encapsulate 45 years of recording history.

BLAME THE goalie: You can still find it on YouTube, the headfirst, diving save the Bruins' Reggie Lemelin made to stop the Devils' Pat Verbeek in Game 7 of the conference finals 21 years ago. "I'll tell you what," the Flyers' goalie coach was saying yesterday at the team's practice facility. "I've made a huge save in the middle of the season when it was 6-2 but nobody gives a [bleep]. But you make the big save in Game 7 . . . " You become immortalized. You become prime time.

Prominently displayed in every classroom in the House at Pooh Corner in Germantown is this chart: Ben: peanuts Audrey: blueberries and strawberries Marley: squash Mateo: fava beans Tahir: seafood Elie, Lola, Raj, Solveig, Zuri: dairy Elise: milk, soy Sarah: eggs These are the reported food allergies of 12 out of 55 Pooh preschoolers. "This is a relatively new phenomenon," says Teri DiCesare, owner and director of Child's Conceptions Day Care Center, which operates Pooh.

President-elect Barack Obama is taking a lot of heat for selecting the Rev. Rick Warren, an ardent opponent of abortion rights and same-sex marriage, to give the inaugural invocation next month. Obama differs with the evangelical preacher on abortion and many other social issues, but he did not let those differences prevent him from extending the invitation. It was a courageous decision. It was also the correct one. Of all the tests Americans take each year, it's time to throw out the most narrow-minded kind: the litmus test.

SOME analogies simply don't work. While Carol Towarnicky ("Wrong Kind of Islamo-awareness," Nov. 1) makes a valid point that demagoguery in any form is wrong and that we can't argue that because some in a group are evil then all are evil, her reference to the Catholic martyrs of Spain as "for-real fascists" is offensive. There were almost 10,000 Catholic religious men and women executed by a communist regime because they wouldn't renounce their faith, a litmus test for loyalty to the besieged government.

As should be obvious by now, the geeks shall inherit the Earth. Knowledge is power, and in this age of cybermania and electronic cornucopia, the geeks seem to know everything, or at least, to know what they're doing, which puts them gigabytes ahead of the rest of us. This time of year, they are also hugely in demand. From Thanksgiving to the end of January, the geeks who staff the customer-service counters at electronics retailers and tech-support lines at computer companies are as busy as accountants in the run-up to April 15. Why?