Update: Dole's assistant now tells CBS News: "He checked himself in for a routine procedure and will discharge tomorrow."

Original post: Longtime senator and 1996 presidential candidate Bob Dole has been hospitalized because he's sick. "He is at Walter Reed not for a checkup," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on the Senate floor Tuesday. "He is there because he is infirm. He is sick." Dole has been trying to overcome a leg infection for three years, the Associated Press reports. The former Kansas senator is 89 and was seriously injured in World War II.

In September, he wrote an essay for The Washington Post about "life after losing." Dole wrote, "Sure, losing an election hurts, but I’ve experienced worse. And at an age when every day is precious, brooding over what might have been is self-defeating."

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Elspeth Reeve