Obama nominating 3 to US appeals court

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is calling on Senate Republicans to allow prompt votes on three lawyers he’s nominating to an understaffed federal appeals court in Washington. In the White House Rose Garden on Tuesday, Obama criticized delays in votes on his prior judicial nominees as political and said that “for the good of the American people it has to stop.” He says too much of the people’s business is at stake. Obama says his three nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit are highly qualified to serve. The nominees are Cornelia Pillard, a Georgetown University law professor; Patricia Ann Millet, an appeals lawyer in Washington and Robert Leon Wilkins, a judge on the U.S. District Court in Washington.