The appointment process for advice and consent positions consists of three main stages. The first stage is selection, clearance, and nomination by the President. This step includes preliminary vetting, background checks, and ethics checks of potential nominees. At this stage, the President may also consult with Senators who are from the same party if the position is located in a state. The second stage of the process is consideration of the nomination in the Senate, most of which takes place in committee. Finally, if a nomination is approved by the full Senate, the nominee is given a commission signed by the President and sworn into office. During the 110th Congress, President George W. Bush submitted to the Senate 52 nominations to independent and other agencies for full-time positions. Of these 52 nominations, 27 were confirmed, 9 were withdrawn, and 16 were returned to him in accordance with Senate rules. For those nominations that were confirmed, an average of 110 days elapsed between nomination and confirmation. The President made two recess appointments to full-time positions in independent agencies during the 110th Congress. Each recess appointment was followed by a nomination which is included in the total of 52 nominations. The methodology used in this report to count the length of time between nomination and confirmation differs from that which was used in previous similar CRS reports. The statistics presented here include the days during which the Senate was adjourned for its summer recesses and between sessions of Congress. The methodological change, which may reduce the comparability of statistics in this report with those of the earlier research, is discussed in the text of this report, as well as in Appendix E. Reasons for the change include the Senate's conversion of traditionally long recesses into a series of short recesses punctuated by pro forma sessions during the 110th Congress; the fact that although committees may not be taking direct action on nominations in the form of hearings or votes, they are likely still considering and processing nominations during recesses; and a desire to be consistent with the methodology used by many political scientists as well as CRS research on judicial nominations. In addition, an argument could be made that the decision to extend Senate consideration of nominees over the course of a recess is intentional, and the choice to extend this length of time is better represented by including all days, including long recesses. Information for this report was compiled from data from the Senate nominations database of the Legislative Information System at http://www.congress.gov/nomis/, the Congressional Record (daily edition), the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, telephone discussions with agency officials, agency websites, the United States Code, and the 2008 "Plum Book" (United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions). This report will not be updated.