Word: litmus
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...screening process is not that narrowly focused, protests Grover ("Rocky") Rees III, who is Meese's special assistant for judicial selection. "We don't have any litmus test." Perhaps not, but the checking procedure has derailed the nomination of the Justice Department's own Deputy Solicitor General, Andrew Frey, for, among other things, his support of an antihandgun group. It also disqualified Judith Whittaker, a highly rated Republican lawyer from Kansas City, for supporting the Equal Rights Amendment...
...Some of our critics do have litmus tests," complains Rees angrily. "They say that no matter how well qualified a candidate is, he can't be a judge if he shares President Reagan's opinion of abortion or affirmative action." The escalation of partisan infighting has begun to worry close observers who take neither side in the fray. Constitutional Scholar Archibald Cox, who was fired as special Watergate prosecutor by President Nixon, fears that politicizing the appointment process endangers something more crucial to the nation than either party's social agenda. He warns, "The idea of judicial independence...
...late Pontiff's bishops did not thrive under him. The language of the Second Vatican Council had seemed to promise greater "collegiality" between bishops and the Pope (whose office for centuries was less powerful than now). But John Paul did not see it that way. He applied theological litmus tests for bishops' appointments and required national bishops' conferences to clear statements on doctrine with the Vatican. "Even conservative Cardinals of large archdioceses have been unhappy with the way the Curia has interfered with their authority," says McBrien. "They want a Pope who will respect that authority...
...speaking? As Mandy Grunwald, who produced Bill Clinton’s 1992 commercials, told me: “We said all you have to do is endorse our party’s candidate for president, and [Bob Casey] refused, and that was it….There was no abortion litmus-test...
...much more open to greater collegial participation among his bishops. His papacy saw the centralization of church authority. He published a decree effectively requiring national bishops' conferences to get Vatican approval before making statements on doctrine and made episcopal appointments subject to seeming litmus tests on topics like abortion and homosexuality. Even conservatives like Father Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the interfaith journal First Things, feel that the result, at least in the U.S., has been the advancement of "team players, CEOs and managers. They have genuine piety, but they are not the kind of people who are very spiritually...