[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 17860-17862]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           EXECUTIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

  NOMINATION OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL DOUGLAS E. LUTE, TO BE LIEUTENANT 
                           GENERAL, U.S. ARMY

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate resumes 
executive session and will proceed to a vote on Executive Calendar No. 
165, which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read the nomination of Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute 
to be Lieutenant General.
  The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the nomination 
of Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, to be Lieutenant General, U.S. Army, under 
title 10, U.S.C., section 601?
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mrs. BOXER (when her name was called). Present.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from South Dakota (Mr. 
Johnson) is necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 94, nays 4, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 236 Ex.]

                                YEAS--94

     Akaka
     Alexander
     Allard
     Barrasso
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Brown
     Brownback
     Bunning
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Chambliss
     Clinton
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Coleman
     Collins
     Conrad
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Craig
     Crapo
     DeMint
     Dodd
     Dole
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Ensign
     Enzi
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Graham
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Isakson
     Kennedy
     Kerry
     Klobuchar
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     Lott
     Lugar
     Martinez
     McCain
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Mikulski
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nelson (FL)
     Nelson (NE)
     Obama
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Salazar
     Sanders
     Schumer
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stabenow
     Stevens
     Sununu
     Thune
     Vitter
     Voinovich
     Warner
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--4

     Byrd
     McCaskill
     Tester
     Webb

                        ANSWERED ``PRESENT''--1

       
     Boxer
       

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Johnson
       
  The nomination was confirmed.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, it is my understanding that there are 
three votes for district court judges, is that true?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is true.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that all votes be 
10 minutes in duration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there is 10 minutes 
of debate preceding the votes.
  Who yields time?
  The Senator from Vermont is recognized.
  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, we are going to have how many 
nominations?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Three. The Senator has 5 minutes.
  Mr. LEAHY. Madam Presient, the Senate continues to make progress

[[Page 17861]]

today with the confirmation of three more lifetime appointments to the 
Federal bench, Benjamin Hale Settle to the District Court for the 
Western District of Washington, Richard Joseph Sullivan to the District 
Court for the Southern District of New York, and Joseph S. Van Bokkelen 
to the District Court for the Northern District of Indiana. The 
nominations of Mr. Settle and Mr. Sullivan are for vacancies deemed by 
the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to be judicial 
emergencies. All three nominees have the support of their home State 
Senators. I thank Senators Murray, Cantwell, Clinton, Schumer, Lugar, 
and Bayh for working with us and with the President on the nomination.
  These 3 judges will bring this year's judicial confirmations total to 
21. It is before the Fourth of July recess, and we have already 
confirmed many more judges than were confirmed during the entire 1996 
session when President Clinton's nominees were being reviewed by a 
Republican Senate majority. That was the session in which not a single 
circuit court nominee was confirmed. We have already confirmed three 
circuit court judges in the early months of this session. As I have 
previously noted, that also puts us well ahead of the pace established 
by the Republican majority in 1999.
  As the Judiciary Committee chairman, I have always treated this 
President's judicial nominees more fairly than Republicans treated 
President Clinton's. With these confirmations, the Senate will have 
confirmed 121 judges while I have served as Judiciary Chairman. It is a 
little known and wholly unappreciated fact that during the more than 6 
years of the Bush Presidency, more circuit court judges, more district 
court judges, and more total judges have been confirmed while I served 
as Judiciary chairman than during the longer tenures of either of the 
two Republican chairmen working with Republican Senate majorities.
  The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts lists 48 judicial 
vacancies after these nominations are confirmed, yet the President has 
sent us only 26 nominations for these vacancies. Twenty two of these 
vacancies--almost half--have no nominee. Of the 15 vacancies deemed by 
the Administrative Office to be judicial emergencies, the President has 
yet to send us nominees for 6 of them. That means more than a third of 
the judicial emergency vacancies are without a nominee.
  Of the 13 circuit court vacancies, more than half are without a 
nominee. If the President had worked with the Senators from Rhode 
Island, New Jersey, Maryland, California, Michigan, and the other 
States with the remaining circuit vacancies, we could be in position to 
make even more progress.
  As it is, we have cut the circuit vacancies in half, from 26 to 13. 
Contrast that with the way the Republican-led Senate's lack of action 
on President Clinton's moderate and qualified nominees resulted in 
circuit court vacancies increasing from 17 to 26. During most of the 
Clinton years, the Republican-led Senate engaged in strenuous efforts 
to keep circuit judgeships vacant in anticipation of a Republican 
President. To a great extent they succeeded.
  The Judiciary Committee has been working hard to make progress on 
those nominations the President has sent to us. Of course, when he 
sends us well-qualified, consensus nominees with the support of his 
home-state Senators like those before us today, we can have success.
  Mr. Settle is a partner and cofounder of the Shelton, WA, law firm of 
Settle & Johnson, PLLC, where he has worked for 30 years. He also 
served 7 years as a prosecutor and defense counsel in the U.S. Army 
Judge Advocate General Corps.
  Mr. Sullivan is general counsel to Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc., 
where he has worked since 2005. Before that, he worked as a Federal 
prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and in private practice 
at the Wall Street law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen, & Katz.
  Mr. Van Bokkelen is the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of 
Indiana, where he has served since 2001. He has worked in private 
practice for the law firms of Goodman, Ball, Van Bokkelen & Leonard and 
Wilson, Donnesberger, Van Bokkelen & Reid. He previously served as an 
assistant U.S. attorney and as an assistant attorney general in the 
Indiana Attorney General's office.
  I congratulate the nominees and their families on their confirmation 
today.
  Have the yeas and nays been asked for on the Benjamin Hale Settle 
nomination?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. They have not.
  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is all time yielded back?
  Mr. LEAHY. I yield back my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania is recognized.
  Mr. SPECTER. Madam President, I seek recognition to speak on the 
nomination of Benjamin Settle to be a U.S. District Judge for the 
Western District of Washington. Benjamin Hale Settle was nominated by 
President Bush on January 9, 2007. A hearing was held on his nomination 
on March 13, and he was unanimously reported out of the Judiciary 
Committee on April 25.
  Mr. Settle has an impressive resume and a record of service. He 
received his B.A. from Claremont McKenna College in 1969. Upon 
graduating from college, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve and 
entered law school at Willamette University College of Law where he 
received his J.D. degree in 1972.
  After graduating from law school he worked for Don Miles Attorneys as 
an associate until he was called up to serve full time in the Judge 
Advocate General's Corps for the U.S. Army in 1973. Three years later, 
in 1976, Mr. Settle left full time Army service and rejoined the Don 
Miles where he practiced for one year, before opening a small 
partnership of his own. He has enjoyed a successful career as a general 
practitioner, working in a variety of small partnerships over the last 
three decades.
  Mr. Settle's broad practice has encompassed both litigation and 
transactional matters. The nominee has also served as the general 
counsel to several municipal and private corporate entities. In 
addition to his litigation and general counsel work, Mr. Settle has 
served as judge pro tempore in Mason County Superior and District 
Courts where he has managed numerous matters for mediation and 
arbitration.
  The ABA has unanimously rated Mr. Settle ``Qualified.'' The vacancy 
to which Mr. Settle is nominated has been designated a ``judicial 
emergency'' by the nonpartisan Administrative Office of the Courts. I 
hope my fellow Senators will support this nomination.
  Madam President, I also seek recognition to discuss the nomination of 
Richard Sullivan to be a District Judge for the Southern District of 
New York.
  Richard J. Sullivan was nominated to be a U.S. District Court Judge 
for the Southern District of New York on February 15, 2007. A hearing 
was held on his nomination on April 11, 2007, and the Judiciary 
Committee reported his nomination favorably on May 3, 2007.
  He is a highly qualified nominee with a distinguished record both as 
a prosecutor and in private practice. In 1986, he received his B.A. 
degree from the College of William and Mary, where he was elected to 
Phi Beta Kappa. In 1990, he graduated from Yale Law School. Following 
law school, he served as a law clerk to Judge David M. Ebel of the 
United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. In 1991, he 
joined Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz as a litigation associate.
  In 1994, he joined the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern 
District of New York as an assistant U.S. attorney. During his tenure 
in the office, he served in a variety of leadership positions. In 1999, 
he was put in charge of the Office's General Crimes Unit and later 
became chief of the Narcotics Unit. In 2002, he was named the founding 
chief of the newly created International Narcotics Trafficking Unit, 
which was dedicated to investigating and prosecuting the world's 
largest

[[Page 17862]]

narcotics trafficking and money-laundering organizations. From 2002 to 
2005, he also served as director of the New York/New Jersey Organized 
Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.
  In 2005, Mr. Sullivan joined Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc., as 
deputy general counsel for litigation. He still works in that capacity, 
and since 2006 has also served as the general counsel of Marsh Inc., 
the world's largest insurance broker and risk management firm. Marsh & 
McLennan Companies is the parent company of Marsh Inc.
  The American Bar Association has unanimously rated Mr. Sullivan 
``Well Qualified.'' The seat to which he is nominated has been 
designated a ``judicial emergency'' by the nonpartisan Administrative 
Office of the Courts. I hope my fellow Senators will vote to confirm 
Mr. Sullivan.
  And finally, Madam President, I seek recognition to discuss the 
nomination of Joseph S. Van Bokkelen to be a District Judge for the 
Northern District of Indiana.
  President Bush nominated Mr. Van Bokkelen on January 9, 2007. A 
hearing was held on his nomination on April 11 and the Senate Judiciary 
Committee reported his nomination favorably on May 3. He is a highly 
qualified nominee with extensive experience both as a prosecutor and in 
private practice.
  In 1966, Mr. Van Bokkelen received his B.A. degree from Indiana 
University. In 1969, he graduated from Indiana University School of 
Law. After graduating law school, Mr. Van Bokkelen joined the Office of 
the Indiana Attorney General, serving as deputy attorney general and 
subsequently as assistant attorney general. In 1972, he became an 
assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Indiana, where he 
served until 1975.
  Between 1975 and 2001, he worked in private practice as a partner--
first at Wilson, Donnesberger, Van Bokkelen & Reid and then at Goodman, 
Ball, Van Bokkelen & Leonard, P.C. His practice has focused on 
litigation, both civil and criminal. Between 1983 and 1985, he served 
as a special prosecutor to investigate the murder of a prominent 
politician and lawyer in Lake County, IN.
  Since 2001, Mr. Van Bokkelen has served as U.S. Attorney for the 
Northern District of Indiana. His courtroom experience is extensive. 
Over the course of his career, he has tried over 100 cases to verdict. 
The American Bar Association has unanimously rated Mr. Van Bokkelen 
``Well Qualified.''
  I urge my fellow Senators to support this nomination.
  Madam President, I know everybody is anxious to conclude these 
matters. They ought not be noncontroversial. Again, we have Benjamin 
Hale Settle, for the Western District of Washington; Joseph S. Van 
Bokkelen, for the Northern District of Indiana; Richard J. Sullivan, 
for the Southern District of New York.
  All have excellent academic records and professional records and 
passed through the Judiciary Committee. I recommend that my colleagues 
vote for them.
  I yield back the remainder of my time.

                          ____________________