Bush Sending Consensus Nominees to Senate

That's the title of a post at BLT and report at NLJ by Pedro Ruz Gutierrez.

Reality is setting in. With time dwindling for President George W. Bush to get his nominees through, he's looking for compromise. Glen Conrad is just the latest example.

Last Thursday, Bush tapped Conrad, a U.S. district judge in Virginia's Western District, to fill one of the remaining Virginia vacancies on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Conrad is the fifth appellate nominee this year and follows several others announced in breakthrough deals between the White House and the Senate.

Even Curt Levey of the conservative Committee for Justice acknowledges that tapping Conrad from a bipartisan list drawn up by Virginia Sens. Jim Webb and John Warner made sense. "It's so little time left that you really needed to get someone from the Webb-Warner list," Levey says.

Also last week, two consensus candidates for the 6th Circuit -- Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Helene White and Raymond Kethledge, a corporate defense lawyer at Bush Seyferth Kethledge & Paige in Troy, Mich. -- had their confirmation hearings. Virginia Supreme Court Justice G. Steven Agee, another nominee for the 4th Circuit, had his hearing May 1. And Catharina Haynes, a former Baker Botts partner in Dallas, was confirmed April 10 for a 5th Circuit seat.

Earlier coverage of federal judiciary appointments is here.