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For the first time in seven years, the U.S. Senate has confirmed a judge to sit on the important federal appeals court for the District of Columbia. The Senate unanimously confirmed Deputy Solicitor General Sri Srinivasan on Thursday for the seat previously held by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Srinivasan was confirmed because he had huge bipartisan support in the legal community and because he served in both the Bush and Obama administrations, while having no record in partisan politics. But the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia still has three vacancies.

Two previous Obama appointees, Goodwin Liu and Caitlin Halligan, also had stellar legal credentials but were filibustered by Republicans who portrayed them as judicial activists. Halligan was opposed primarily because as New York solicitor general, she represented the state's pro-gun control positions in court. After Liu's nomination was blocked, California Gov. Jerry Brown quickly nominated him to the California Supreme Court, where he now serves.

The partisan war over judicial nominees has accelerated in recent years as Republicans have stalled and, in some cases, filibustered record numbers of appeals court and trial court nominees. It took nearly a year to win confirmation for Srinivasan, who had no formal opposition.

At the same time, the Obama administration has been slow to fill vacancies.

There are three vacancies on the D.C. Circuit, out of 11 seats. The last D.C. Circuit judicial nominee to win confirmation was Brett Kavanaugh in 2006. He had previously served in the Bush White House counsel's office and as a top assistant to then-special prosecutor Kenneth Starr during the investigation of President Clinton and his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

In the current politically polarized atmosphere, nominees to the D.C. Circuit face particular scrutiny because so many of them go on to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Four of the current Supreme Court Justices — Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — all served on that court first. And a fifth justice, Elena Kagan, was nominated to the circuit court by President Clinton but never got a vote.

Srinivasan, 46, is the first South Asian ever to serve on an appellate court. Born in India and raised in Lawrence, Kan., he likely would be high on the short list for a Supreme Court vacancy should one occur.

The state of Texas is turning down billions of federal dollars that would have paid for health care coverage for 1.5 million poor Texans.

By refusing to participate in Medicaid expansion, which is part of the Affordable Care Act, the state will leave on the table an estimated $100 billion over the next decade.

Texas' share of the cost would have been just 7 percent of the total, but for Gov. Rick Perry and the state's Republican-dominated Legislature, even $1 in the name of "Obamacare" was a dollar too much.

"Texas will not be held hostage by the Obama administration's attempt to force us into this fool's errand of adding more than a million Texans to a broken system," Perry said.

Texas Republicans have moved steadily to the right — to where the very concept of public health insurance of any kind is looked at through narrowed eyes. Still, it's not easy to walk away from $100 billion from the federal government to help your state's poor, elderly and disabled, especially when you have powerful stakeholders like hospitals, doctors and cities clamoring for the state to take the money for their sakes.

Texas hospitals stand to lose about $7 billion.

"I don't think we will be OK, actually, especially when you consider the state cut us about $700 million a year in Medicaid payments because of the budget shortfall," says John Hawkins, a senior vice president at the Texas Hospital Association. "Now we're dealing with sequestration, which is another 2 percent.

Shots - Health News

Texas Medicaid Debate Complicated By Politics And Poverty

A day after school officials approved shutting down 50 schools, the Chicago Teachers Union and community activists say they'll hold a voter registration and education campaign. The union is agitated that Mayor Rahm Emanuel, school board members and some lawmakers failed to listen to parents, teachers and others who called for the schools to remain open.

Before they voted yes on the sweeping school closure plan, school board members faced a torrent of criticism Wednesday. Protesters tried to conduct a sit-in at the front of the boardroom, but security officers escorted them out.

Sonya Williams, a parent who had come to testify in defense of her school, said she understood the passion and the outbursts.

"It's just like going to a long funeral and no one will close the casket yet," she said. "The fate of your position, the fate of your job, the fate of your children are up in the air, and they're based on a few people making a decision."

This was the last time before the vote that people could make their pitch to keep schools open. Chicago Alderman Bob Fioretti was among them.

"Substantial research shows that closing schools and moving students increases the dropout rate and the incidence of street violence," he said.

Chicago's 'School Utilization Crisis'

The arguments did not deter Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who, along with Mayor Emanuel, has argued that Chicago has to "right-size" its school district. They have said demographic shifts in mostly black neighborhoods left schools underutilized — plus, the district faces a budget deficit of a billion dollars.

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Then Shira's mother, terrified of losing the sister's newborn baby when the widower, Yochay (Yiftach Klein), considers marrying a widow in Belgium, sets about engineering a match between between Shira and Yochay. Desolate enough at having her own hopes dashed, Shira is downright paralyzed by the ethical and emotional implications of marrying her beloved sister's husband, whom she has loved as a brother.

Other complications intrude to stack the deck against an orderly transition to a settled life; none of them, though, involves a direct challenge to a social order that many secular people argue consigns women to secondary roles as helpmeets.

And it's true that the stakes are low here. Shira's dilemma may be agonizing for her, but it involves no violation of Jewish law, threatens no status quo. The community's kindly rabbi implores her to consult her own feelings. One wonders how he would respond to a request to take a year off to travel by herself, or to train as a rabbi.

In light of the recent violent protests among ultra-Orthodox men (and women) against women who claimed the right to pray as men do at Jerusalem's Western Wall, some would call Kill the Void a roaring case of special pleading. And perhaps Burshtein does take a willfully rosy view of women's standing within the Haredi community. But if she may be willfully blind to politics, she excels at setting before us, in passionately intimate detail, a world to which she is devoted — and one in which women are placed front and center.

Ambience is everything in this director's gorgeous scene-setting. There's nothing remotely monkish or drab about the lavish physicality and rich lighting that infuses a sexually modest subculture with sensual pleasure and — yes — romance. In one achingly lovely scene, Shira squeezes out her grief in the plaintive notes of an accordion as Yochay sways in a hammock, his baby slumbering peacefully on his chest.

Elsewhere a richly soulful Hebrew rendition of Psalm 137 ("If I forget thee, O Jerusalem ...") underscores the transformative power of communal ritual, whose central premise — act, and the feelings will follow — guides Shira toward a decision.

There's nothing pat about this: In the final shot of the movie, on her wedding night, a young woman stands with her back against a wall. What is that look on her face? Is it doubt about the choice she's made? Fright? Or awe before the mystery of her own, and all, existence?