The Senate on Thursday confirmed U.S. District Judge David Hamilton for the Chicago-based federal appeals court, approving a nominee targeted by conservatives as a liberal activist.

Hamilton was approved on a 59-39 vote and became the eighth of President Barack Obama's judicial nominees to win confirmation. He is the third confirmed for a U.S. appeals court, which is usually the last stop for federal court cases.

Republican senators — backed by their conservative allies outside Congress — had blocked a vote for five months until Democrats overcame a filibuster last Tuesday with a 70-29 vote.

The failure to stop the confirmation showed that Republicans lack the clout to block Obama's judicial nominees as the president remakes the federal judiciary following eight years of George W. Bush's mostly conservative choices for the bench.

Obama has been much slower than Bush in sending the Senate nominees to fill court vacancies. However, administration officials have said they are concentrating on the number of Senate confirmations. And they expect that number to soon equal the court confirmations in Bush's first year.

Republicans attacked Hamilton's rulings and his work in the distant past for two liberal organizations: the American Civil Liberties Union in Indiana; and as a fundraiser over two months for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, the troubled group that is under fire from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Congressional budget crunchers Thursday said the Democrats' latest health care plan would hold down federal red ink for at least a 20-year stretch, an assessment that boosted the bill's advocates as the Senate moved gingerly toward a historic debate.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that Majority Leader Harry Reid's 10-year, $848-billion bill would produce a net reduction of $130 billion in federal deficits in its first decade. Perhaps more significantly, the legislation would continue to give back over the next 10 years and beyond, the budget umpires said, because "added revenues and costs savings would probably be greater" than the cost of covering uninsured Americans.

The budget office put a big asterisk on its forecast, using words like "imprecision" and "uncertainty" to describe the long-range projection. It noted that, overall, health care spending remains on an unsustainable path.

However, the bill would not make matters any worse, and maybe even a little better.

With President Barack Obama pledging to tamp down ruinous health care costs, Democrats took the new CBO estimates to the bank, while skipping over the caveats. Preparing for a noontime rally with supporters, Reid, D-Nev., said the legislation would "save lives, save money and save Medicare."

The CBO said Reid's bill would extend coverage to 94 percent of eligible Americans, after subsidies to make premiums more affordable start flowing in 2014. That's one year later than in the House Democratic bill — and well into the next presidential term. Postponing the subsidies by one year allowed Reid to offer somewhat more generous assistance to defray the cost of insurance premiums.

The American war crimes ambassador said Thursday the U.S. is committed to ending impunity for crimes against humanity, in a speech signaling a softening of hostility toward the International Criminal Court.

Stephen Rapp's brief remarks marked the first time a U.S. diplomat has addressed the 110-nation Assembly of State Parties, which oversees the court's work and budget.

He also held a string of bilateral meetings and told delegates he was there to listen and learn.

Rapp underscored Washington's history of helping prosecute those responsible for atrocities dating back at least to the Nazi war crimes trials in Nuremberg.

The world's first international war crimes tribunal began work in 2002. It is a court of last resort to prosecute people suspected of committing war crimes in its member states, if those countries cannot or will not conduct the trials themselves.

The U.N. Security Council also can ask the court to investigate a case.

The United States refused to ratify the court's founding treaty, the 1998 Rome Statute, partly because of fears the court could become a forum for politically motivated prosecutions of troops in unpopular wars like Iraq.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is opposing the Obama administration's decision to try alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a federal civilian court.

Giuliani was mayor on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists flew two hijacked planes into the World Trade Center, another hit the Pentagon and a third crashed in western Pennsylvania. He told NBC's "Today" program Thursday that a conventional criminal trial is "not necessary."

Giuliani said "there's no reason to put New York through this." He also said that if President Barack Obama concluded that military tribunals were impermissible, "I would have been in favor of it." He said the decision to try Mohammed and four others in New York sets a bad precedent.

Regina Schenck, 46, of Herald, a small community in southern Sacramento County, is headed to prison for three years and five months, the sentenced handed down for her stealing $1.3 million from her employer, Sacramento law firm Diepenbrock Harrison.

She was also ordered to repay the $1.3 million to her former employer plus $264,000 in restitution to the IRS. She pleaded guilty on Sept. 1.

Between 2003 and 2008, Ms. Schenck wrote law firm checks to pay her own bills, created false documents, and told lies to cause law firm partners to authorize checks that she secretly used to buy five horses and a horse trailer, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Segal, who prosecuted the case.

She also used the law firm’s computer network to inflate her salary, give herself bonuses and benefits, and she omitted her fraud-procured income from her tax return, prosecutors say.

A federal court has reversed a ruling that overturned Boeing Co.’s $1.1 billion contract for maintenance of an Air Force refueling tanker jet.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s ruling Tuesday overturns a 2008 decision by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and reinstates Chicago-based Boeing’s 10-year contract for work on the 50-year-old fleet of KC-135 tankers, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Boeing, which built the KC-135, was awarded the maintenance contract in September 2007, and the aerospace giant has been awarded similar contracts for nearly a decade.

Competitor Alabama Aircraft Industries Inc. of Birmingham, Ala., filed suit, alleging the contract was not properly awarded to Boeing and citing issues involving pricing and past performance, The Associated Press reported.