Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s return to Capitol has been closely watched. Can she still do her job?
Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/TNS

WASHINGTON — For seven months in 1988, Joe Biden was absent from the Senate, recovering from operations to repair brain aneurysms. The first lasted eight hours. Three months later, a second aneurysm sent him back to surgery. The Delaware senator’s convalescence was so guarded that he wouldn’t take phone calls from President Ronald Reagan. Colleagues feared that even if he recovered, he wouldn’t be the same, according to a Biden memoir and Delaware Today. Press scrutiny was respectful and scarce. But when the gregarious Biden returned to the Senate, it was pretty much business as usual. The Was...