The U.S. Senate moves this morning toward a procedural vote that could diminish the hopes of U.S. Sen. Richard Burr to stop tobacco regulation by the Food and Drug Administration.

Burr, a Winston-Salem Republican, hails from the hometown of R.J. Reynolds, producer of Camels and the nation’s second-largest tobacco manufacturing company, Barb Barrett reports.

He has vowed to do anything possibly to prevent passage of S.B. 982, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.

Burr's threat has been widely interpreted as including a pledge to filibuster the bill — engaging in an endless debate or launching a series of procedural motions that can only be cut off by a 60-vote margin in the Senate.

That cloture vote is scheduled for 11 a.m. today.

More after the jump.

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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.