Sleeping On The Job

This happened last week, but I couldn't resist giving it a mention at some point. Apparently, poor Justice and former lead ACLU counsel Ruth Bader Ginsburg fell asleep during testimony regarding a political redistricting case. Now, many of us could be forgiven a little nap now and again. Work is hard and sometimes you don't sleep as much as you should. Next thing you know, you're nodding and then snoring. I hope she didn't go that far, but my point is, I sympathize with her plight.

Granted, I feel Justices to the Supreme Court might be a little better rested or at the very least if they seem incapable of listening to such weighty testimony, excuse themselves from the hearing or the Court. Maybe I'm just a little old-fashioned that way. Falling asleep while working on some accounting sheets or doing data entry is one thing. Falling asleep while testimony is being given on a fairly important issue is quite another.

I did notice, of course, that Fox News was the only one to even make this issue public of all the current news and media outlets on TV. Must be that right-wing bias that caused them to do that. Oy, that even hurts to type. Maybe if someone had called and said it was Thomas or Alito or even Scalia who passed out, we'd have had legions of well-coiffed reporters and reporterettes accompanied by their massed electronics setups to cover the event live with minute-by-minute commentary. Perspective people, please.

In the long run, it's not really a huge deal if Justice Ginsburg, who is admittedly very old, takes a little nap. What it speaks more towards, besides the continued rampant media bias to protect such "revered" figures of the Left, is that not only are Supreme Court Justices human, they are often very frail. Making them social arbiters and superlegislatures does nothing but create an oligarchy of whatever political philosophy currently graces the bench. These are just people, and as such they should confine their role to that envisioned, if not by the Founding Fathers then at least the dubious Marbury v. Madison judicial review precedent. Making law out of whole cloth is one thing. Spinning the loom while you're asleep at the wheel is far worse.