By AP/KWMU
St. Louis, MO – A deal between party leaders in the U.S. Senate means two judicial nominees from Missouri will get a vote in the next two months.
Senators Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), along with White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, agreed that 25 federal judge nominees would be voted on without any filibusters. In return, the President won't make any more recess appointments for the rest of this year. Those are appointments made when Congress is not in session that essentially automatically make a nominee a judge until the next Congress.
The Senate yesterday already approved one of those judges (Marcia Cooke, a former chief inspector general under Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, by a 96-0 vote).
Included in those 25 nominees are the St. Louis area's federal prosecutor, Ray Gruender, and state Supreme Court Judge Duane Benton. The President has picked them to sit on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis.