Justice Ginsburg: Not '100% sober' at State of the Union

WASHINGTON – For Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, falling asleep at the State of the Union address is nothing new. All it takes is a good glass of wine.

As she did two years ago, Ginsburg admitted Thursday night that, yes, the photos of her appearing to nod off at President Obama's big speech last month showed her dozing. "As I often do," she said.

But there was a good reason, she added: "I wasn't 100% sober."

Seems before the address, some of the justices got together for dinner, and the lone Californian among them, Justice Anthony Kennedy, supplied some excellent California wine. Ginsburg had sworn she would stick to sparkling water, but "the dinner was so delicious, it needed wine."

From then on, in her telling, it was Kennedy's and Justice Stephen Breyer's job to keep her awake throughout the speech. In the old days, she says, now retired Justice David Souter would sit next to her and give her a jolt when she needed one. But Kennedy and Breyer, she said, "are sort of timid about that."

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The members of Congress behind her, who she described as "bobbing up and down all the time," didn't help, either. And when she got home, she got a call from one of her granddaughters who had been watching the speech on TV: "Bubbe," she said, "you were sleeping again!"

Justice Antonin Scalia, who like several conservative justices does not attend the State of the Union, was unsympathetic to Ginsburg's plight during their joint appearance at a Smithsonian Associates event at George Washington University.

"Serves you right, I say!" Scalia intoned. For Supreme Court justices to sit stone-faced during the otherwise partisan production is "giving dignity to a childish spectacle," he groused.

But as for having wine first, Scalia teased Ginsburg: "That's the first intelligent thing you've done!"