Senate Judicial Confirmations in Colorado

Floor Speech

SENATE JUDICIAL CONFIRMATIONS IN COLORADO -- (Senate - September 26, 2008)

Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee for working with Senator Salazar and myself in getting two individuals finally confirmed by the Senate; that is, Phillip Brimmer and Christine Arguello to the District Court of Colorado. I know it was not an easy task that the chairman of the Judiciary Committee had before him. I know he had to buck some of the persistent rules of his committee, he had to buck a very tight timeline at the end and had to deal with some misunderstandings that further delayed their confirmation.

I respect him highly for his good work as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. I respect him for the fact that he was able to keep his commitment to both myself and Senator Salazar on these two individuals. Senator Salazar and I worked hard to work out an agreement where we could fill at least two of the vacancies of the three existing vacancies on the District Court of Colorado.

I also compliment my good friend and colleague Senator Salazar for being willing to work with me to meet the needs of this district court. When you have three vacancies on a district court, they are reaching the status of what we call emergency status. That means there is considerable more workload there because of the vacancies, and as a result of that it begins to impede their ability to deal with the cases that might come before that district court.

I also state for the record that this is a court that deals with a very heavy workload and probably should have an additional seat on the bench there in this district court because of the heavy workload we have in the Colorado District Court.

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