[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 159 (Friday, September 29, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Page S4804]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      REMEMBERING DIANNE FEINSTEIN

  Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, over the next days and weeks and months, 
we are going to hear a lot about our dear friend Dianne Feinstein, and 
I am so glad that some of her friends from California and the Speaker--
former Speaker--Nancy Pelosi and her family are here to just be with us 
in these first moments of our learning of her passing.
  And we all have stories to tell about Dianne, but when I joined, for 
example, the Intel Committee, and she was chairing it, she said: Mazie, 
this is not a committee that you can just parachute in and not spend 
the time really learning about our intelligence community and all 
that--and I really took that to heart. I spent many, many hours on that 
committee, even though we could never talk about it. And then at one of 
the earlier hearings of the Judiciary Committee--and I really marveled 
at this. It was a hearing that had to do with guns, and I always 
associate, of course, Dianne with her courageous fight to ban assault 
weapons. And one of the newer members of the Judiciary Committee, as I 
was, chose that hearing to lecture Dianne Feinstein about her efficacy 
on guns, and I thought this was so untoward against someone who had 
spent so much of her time fighting for gun safety. But she just said: I 
have not spent all these years on this committee to be lectured by you, 
which I thought was really quite tactful.
  But later she said to me--she took me aside, and she said: Do you 
think I was too mean? Do you think I should apologize? And all I could 
think of was, Are you kidding? That was Dianne Feinstein. She was old 
school. She was very kind. And I am wearing a scarf that she gave to 
me. And you have heard some of my other colleagues talk about, if we 
admired something of hers, she would give it to us. Well, this scarf 
she was wearing at that moment, and I said: Oh, that is such a lovely 
scarf, and she just took it off and gave it to me.
  I wear this scarf often. In fact, we had to be careful about admiring 
anything Dianne had because she would likely take it off and give it to 
us. But this is one of the things that I will always remember about 
Dianne Feinstein, her courage, her integrity, her commitment to public 
service, literally, until the very, very end.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Van Hollen). The Senator from New 
Hampshire is recognized.

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