When I saw this headline in my RSS reader -- "One question the senators did not ask: how's her health?" -- I assumed it was going to be a story about how those gosh-darn ungentlemanly career politicians failed to ask Sonia Sotomayor about her recently broken ankle. But it isn't. It's a story about how the senators failed to inquire after Sotomayor's diabetes, which she has had since the age of eight. And the article is not concerned with kindness, but miserly moral mathematics: because it is unlikely "that Sotomayor will have the longevity of someone such as Justice John Paul Stevens," Sotomayor’s "seat could more quickly be filled by a Republican than someone without a chronic illness."

Should they have asked about this? ]]>