The Senate confirmed Judge Andre Davis to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit today by a vote of 72-16. As David Ingram reports on BLT,
The seat that Davis will fill has been vacant since 2000, when Judge Francis Murnaghan Jr. of Baltimore died. President Bill Clinton nominated Davis for the seat, but the choice came near the end of Clinton’s second term and it languished in the Senate. Then, Senate Democrats blocked President George W. Bush’s attempts to fill the seat, most recently with Maryland’s U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein. . . .
With Rosenstein’s nomination, Democrats countered that he did not have strong enough ties to Maryland. Though he had been an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland from 1997 to 2001, he worked most of his career in Washington for the U.S. Justice Department and is a native Pennsylvanian.