Dianne Feinstein: “I want Senator Kyl to know that it has really been a very great pleasure for me to work with the Senator over these past…”

“I want Senator Kyl to know that it has really been a very great pleasure for me to work with the Senator over these past 2 years. I think it has been for me one of the best experiences I have had in the time I have been in the Senate, and that is two Senators from different political parties sitting down to try to work out something which is enormously difficult to do, and that is the drafting of a new constitutional amendment. The Senator mentioned that we have done 60-plus drafts, and that we have met with the Attorney General, the White House, met members of victims' groups. The Senator brought in the counsel for victims. Larry Tribe, from Harvard University, worked with us, and we believe, I think, that we have an amendment that will now stand the test of public scrutiny and stand the test of time. I want to share, Madam President, with the Senate how I first became involved in victims' rights. It was in the mid-1970s in San Francisco when a man broke into a home on Portrero Hill. He tied the man in the home to a chair and murdered him by beating him with a hammer, a chopping block and a ceramic vase. He then repeatedly raped his 24-year-old wife, breaking several of her bones. He slit her wrist and tried to strangle her with a telephone cord before setting their home on fire and leaving them to go up in flames. Miraculously, this young woman, whose name I purposely left out of this, is still alive.”