NewsMax.com Wires
Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Under the agreement, Democrats will allow votes on 25 non-controversial appointments to the district and appeals courts. In exchange, Bush agreed not to invoke his power to skip around the Senate and give one- and two-year appointments to his judicial nominees, as he has done twice in recent months.

The agreement was sealed in a meeting among top Senate Democrats and Republicans as well as Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff.

Starting in March, Democrats had halted all judicial nominees until they received a promise from Bush that he wouldn't use his recess appointment power. The Senate starts its Memorial Day recess on Monday.

Daschle Didn't Oppose Clinton's Recess Appointments

But now that Democrats have been "given that assurance, we're now prepared to work with our Republican colleagues," said Senate Minority leader Tom Daschle, in confirming the deal.

The Senate confirmations of the 20 U.S. District Court judges and the five U.S. Appeals Court judges will come over the next three months, Daschle said. Other judicial nominees will be considered case by case, he said.

Daschle said he and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., would make an official announcement on the Senate floor later this afternoon.

A reporter's call to the White House for comment was not immediately returned.

Bush already has used recess appointments to name two Republicans to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals: Charles Pickering, a former chairman of the Mississippi Republican party and father of GOP Rep. Chip Pickering, and William Pryor, the former GOP attorney general of Alabama.

Democrats were furious at those appointments because they had been successfully blocking Pryor, Pickering, Hispanic lawyer Miguel Estrada and Judges Priscilla Owen, Carolyn Kuhl and Janice Rogers Brown from getting confirmation votes.

Estrada later withdrew his nomination, but the others are still waiting.

It takes 60 senators to force a confirmation vote in the Senate, which is split with 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats and one Democrat-leaning independent, Jim Jeffords of Vermont.

Owen, Kuhl, Brown and other judicial nominees Democrats found objectionable are not part of the impending deal, sources said. White House nominees for positions outside the federal courts also are not part of the deal, they said.

Republicans had planned to force a vote on one of the noncontroversial nominees - Marcia Cooke, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's former chief inspector general - on Tuesday, but a deal would make that vote unnecessary, the sources said.

Democrats first threatened to hold up Bush's nominees in March, one month after Bush gave Pryor an almost two-year stint on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. The president in January gave Pickering a one-year term on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

How Dare Bush Follow the Constitution!

Democrats called Bush's appointments "a flagrant abuse of presidential power," but Republicans said that Bush wouldn't have had to use recess appointments if Democrats hadn't been blocking his nominees.

© 2004 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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