Mark Pryor: “I rise for the purpose of notifying my colleagues that later today or tomorrow I intend to ask unanimous consent for two…”

“I rise for the purpose of notifying my colleagues that later today or tomorrow I intend to ask unanimous consent for two of my judge nominees to be voted on this week. Both are noncontroversial, both have been heartily endorsed by Senator Boozman, my colleague from Arkansas, and basically everybody else who has looked at this. These two judges came out of the Judiciary Committee, one of them on October 31 and the other on November 14. These two judges are completely noncontroversial, but we have a sense of urgency, not only because we have two vacancies on the Federal bench in Arkansas, which is in and of itself a problem, but we have a real sense of urgency because one of these judges is an elected judge. In Arkansas, those are nonpartisan elections. One of these judges is an elected judge and the filing period for his seat opens on February 24 and closes on March 3. We find ourselves in a situation where we are here this week, then we will be in recess next week. We will then come back on the evening of February 24, presumably for 5:30 p.m. votes, if things work on that day as they typically do around here. We would presumably have a 5:30 p.m. vote, and at that point the filing would be open, with other lawyers and judges interested in that position, and there is a domino effect that happens in Arkansas because of that.…”