Dome has heard that U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole is 23.

Twenty-three, you say? That's right, she's the 23rd oldest person in the U.S. Senate.

Although a recent TV ad implies that Dole is in her 90s, there's only one senator who's that advanced in age: Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, who was born in 1917.

Five senators are in their 80s: Sens. Ted Stevens, Frank Lautenberg, Daniel Inouye, Daniel Akaka and John Warner.

And 19 senators, including Dole, are septuagenerians. The list includes Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Dick Lugar and Ted Kennedy, who are all older than the North Carolina's senior senator, and John McCain and Jay Rockefeller, who are younger.

The average age of a U.S. senator is currently about 63 years old, as is the median, although those numbers will drop a little in the next few years with the possible departures of Kennedy, who has a brain tumor, and Stevens, who has been indicted.

At 43, the youngest is Sen. John Sununu; the third youngest at 47, Sen. Barack Obama.

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr joined his Democratic colleague on the Senate Veteran Affairs committee today in calling for an independent investigation into a veterans hospital in Texas and its diagnoses of PTSD.

Burr, of Winston-Salem, is the top Republican on the committee. He and Sen. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, the panel’s chairman, said the Inspector General for the Veteran Affairs department needs to look into diagnoses at the medical center in Temple, Texas, reports Barb Barrett.

There, an employee recently sent out an e-mail suggesting that workers not diagnose post-praumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, among patients.

“It is troubling if even one person at VA would encourage other employees to make anything other than a completely honest health assessment of our veterans,” Burr said. “These allegations are serious.”