It's befitting that Dianne Feinstein cast her final vote in the U.S. Senate only a few hours before she died, and that it was entered on behalf of keeping the federal government from shutting down.
For Senator Feinstein, who died early Friday morning at the age of 90, always cared far more about the work and substance of governing than about political machinations or the techniques and trifles of campaigns during her extraordinary 60-year career.
From the early 1960s, when she adjudicated paroles and prison terms for female inmates incarcerated in California's penitentiary for women as an appointee of Governor Pat Brown, through her historic six-term career in the Senate, Feinstein was legendary, if sometimes mocked by insiders and hacks, for her earnest, conscientious, and laborious devotion to mastering the depth and detail of complex issues facing government.