By JM Rieger and Niels Lesniewski

The Senate’s rare Sunday session convened on a somber note, mourning the loss of a son of the chamber’s president. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., each opened with condolences for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., on the death of his son Beau Biden, the former attorney general of Delaware, Saturday night. Shortly after that, Democratic Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the most senior member of the Senate, recalled watching Beau grow up from the time he arrived in the Senate shortly after the elder Biden’s election. “I knew the tragedy his family had gone through, and I cherished time with his office right near mine, when his sons Beau and Hunter would be there with him,” Leahy said. “I watched them grow up. I saw Beau Biden become the epitome of what a … state’s attorney general should be. That’s a model that all attorneys general throughout the country could have followed.” Read more at WGDB.