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Mrs. McCASKILL. Mr. President, I rise to spend a couple minutes talking about Judge Audrey G. Fleissig, one of the nominees we will hopefully be voting on within the hour. This is a woman I have known for many years who has an outstanding career in the legal community in Missouri. She was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Missouri and went on to be the first woman to hold the position of U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Missouri. Currently, she serves as U.S. magistrate judge in the Eastern District.
I could go on about her background as a litigation attorney for 11 years in one of the most respected law firms in Kansas City. I could spend some time talking about how much she loves to teach and how she has been a trial advocacy teacher for a good deal of the last 20 years. She has taught pretrial practice, trial advocacy, and now evidence at the Washington University School of Law, one of the finest universities in the country. She was also a student intern to the Honorable Edward Filippine, who was a U.S. district judge in the Eastern District of Missouri 30 years ago. She has a J.D. degree, a Dean's Honor Scholar and an Order of the Coif from Washington University Law School and was magna cum laude from Carleton College for her undergrad years.
She has been one of the stars of the legal community in Missouri, but she has also been a mom. She has managed her career while she raised children, and her children are now in their twenties. I have such deep respect for someone who has done well with the demands of a legal career and a judicial career and also done very well on the family front.
She is somebody who believes very much that putting on a robe does not mean one exits the community. We have a lot of judges who take that particular attitude, especially on the Federal bench, that once they become a Federal judge, then they no longer participate in community activities that are so important to the health and vibrancy of our country, our States, and certainly of our metropolitan areas.
When she worked with her children as they were growing up, she was very active in their schools and tried to instill in them a love of reading. Now that her children are grown, she has for the last 10 years worked with Ready Readers, a charitable organization that works with low-income preschool children, ages 3 to 5, to inspire them to want to read. Think about that. She is a U.S. magistrate with a full-time job, with a prestigious black robe. With that kind of career, anyone could, frankly, take a deep breath and say: I am here. Instead, she has spent the last 10 years continuing to volunteer with a charitable organization that tries to inspire young children to love to read.
I have to tell the truth--this is the kind of person we need on the Federal bench. Will she be respectful to litigants? Of course. Will she understand the rules of evidence? She teaches them at one of the best law schools in the country. Does she understand the pressures of litigation? Yes. She has been one. But most importantly, does she understand there are other needs in the community outside of what goes on in the courtroom, and does that inform her as a judge? She will be fair. She will work extremely hard. She is known as one of the hardest workers in the Federal courthouse in St. Louis.
It was an honor to recommend her to the President. I am so pleased that she reaches this moment in her career where she can become a U.S. Federal district judge and provide the kind of atmosphere for justice that we hold so dear in this Nation. I know she will be impartial. I know she will never let politics dictate a decision. I know the law will be her master and that she will listen carefully to the evidence and never think she knows best--let the litigants try their cases and let the law reign supreme.
I am proud of her accomplishments. I am proud to support her. I have a feeling she will be confirmed by a very wide margin. Don't ask me why she
had to sit around on the calendar for 60 days. I won't go into one of my rants about secret holds. I will save that for another day. Today, I will say it is time that we take this vote, and I make a prediction it won't even be close because there is absolutely no reason this woman should not have been on the bench months ago. I look forward to her confirmation today.
I yield the floor, suggest the absence of a quorum, and ask unanimous consent that the time be charged equally to both sides.
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