Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman on the US Supreme Court, and one of two Jewish Justices (Breyer is the other one) on the bench right now, just had surgery for pancreatic cancer. This is scary stuff, since pancreatic cancer has a tendency to pick people off pretty quickly, but doctors say they caught the tumor–which is only 1 cm wide–pretty early. For now, Ginsburg is resting at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center after yesterday’s surgery. We wish her a full and speedy recovery.
For more info about Ginsburg, check out this Salon profile, and read her hugely impressive dissenting opinion on Gonzales v. Carhart (partial birth abortion ban) here.