I had a dream last night. It was the morning after the primaries for the 2008 presidential election, which in my dream were all held on the same day. I had gone to bed early and missed the results, so upon waking I checked online to see who had won.

Surprisingly, the Democratic nomination went to John Edwards, the charismatic Senator from North Carolina who campaigns primarily on the issue of poverty. He hadn’t been my first choice, but I was somewhat pleased to see him win the nomination anyway and I looked forward to the possibility of his winning the presidency.

Even more surprisingly however, the Republican nomination went to Jonathan Edwards, the eighteenth-century American revivalist preacher, known primarily for his fire-and-brimstone sermons.

Turning on the television, I was dismayed to see that the media was entirely focused on the fact that both nominees had the same name. They had an expert on doing a statistical analysis of names of politicians to see what the odds of this happening were. I was frustrated, because I felt like the top story should have been that the Republicans nominated a Bible-thumping Puritan from the eighteenth century. Didn’t that concern anyone?

I went into the office - in my dream I worked in an office - and all of my co-workers in this office-type place were absolutely giddy with the coincidence of the two candidates having the same name. I noted that the Republican Jonathan Edwards was a dangerous religious zealot who would destroy all of the freedoms we currently enjoy, but - of course - nobody paid me any mind.

Even so, I woke up more amused than frustrated. And today, I learned that the debate tonight would feature questions being asked by voters via YouTube. So of course, that’s now the story far more than anything that was said during the debate. Can I dream ‘em or what?

Anyway, the Question of the Week was suggested by Lee after reading that the ‘92 Vice Presidential Debate was my favorite political debate ever. As always, free to answer the question, or just continue the conversation.

What was your favorite debate ever and why?

So, this article has been getting a lot of attention on the Internet, and I feel I need to respond:

In a radio programme to be aired today, Scots historian Fiona Watson and literary expert Molly Rourke claim the story of Macbeth was penned by a Scottish monk on St Serf’s Island in the middle of Loch Leven 400 years before William Shakespeare even drew breath.

Pause for laughter.

In Macbeth the Highland King to be broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland, Watson says Macbeth and his wife, Gruoch, were in fact “respected, God-fearing folk”.

According to Watson, the “almost entirely fantastical view” of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth drawn by William Shakespeare is lifted, almost word for word in places, from a collection of folklore recorded by St Serf’s monk, Andrew de Wyntoun.

Wow, there’s so much wrong with that, it’s hard to know where to start.

First of all, the “almost word for word” case is never made, at least not in the article. The few points of similarity between the two texts that are mentioned are dealt with below. But there really was a historical Macbeth, and so any two accounts of his life are bound to have some similarities, whether they be historical or legendary.

Did Shakespeare have an “almost entirely fantastical view” of Macbeth? Yes. He was a playwright, not a historian. He often made changes to history to suit his dramatic purposes. That’s what he’s supposed to do. He was also writing for King James, who was a direct descendant of both Malcolm and Banquo. So of course he’s going to make them good and noble and make Macbeth a savage butcher. He knew which side of his bread was buttered.

Also, the Andrew Wyntoun text is from 1420. How is that “400 years before William Shakespeare even drew breath” which he first did in 1564? And if the text really were from 1164, it would not be at all readable to a twenty-first century English-only speaker, as this text somewhat is. Check it out.

But the most striking part of the article is that it completely ignores the fact that we already know what Shakespeare’s source was for the events described. It was Raphael Holinshed’s The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. In fact, not only was Holinshed’s Chronicles a major source for Macbeth, but also for King Lear, Cymbeline, and all ten of Shakespeare’s history plays. If you don’t know that, it’s easy to be taken in by the following observation in the article:

Referring to Shakespeare’s prophecy that Macbeth shall be safe until Birnham Wood comes to Dunsinane and that no-one “of woman born” shall harm Macbeth, Rourke explained in Wyntoun’s work: “The person [Macbeth's mother] met later came and saw her, gave her a ring, and prophesied about what was going to happen in the future. One of the things he said was that this child they’d had would never be killed by man born of woman. Wyntoun also recorded that Macbeth believed he’d never be conquered until the wood of Birnham came to Dunsinane.”

Thanks to the wonderful Furness Collection at the University of Pennsylvania, we can see the source for this on Page 174 of the Historie of Scotland section of Holinshed’s Chronicles:

And suerlie herevpon had he put Makduffe to death, but that a certaine witch, whom hee had in great trust, had told that he should neuer be slaine with man borne of anie woman, nor vanquished till the wood of Bernane came to the castell of Dunsinane.

The witch told Macbeth, like the apparitions do in the play, not a person telling Macbeth’s mother and giving her a ring.

The article continues on with reckless abandon:

The historians claim another element of Wyntoun found in Shakespeare is the three witches that open the play. Wyntoun wrote: “Ane nicht, he thoucht while he was sa settled [that] he saw three women, and they women then thoucht he three Wierd Sisters most like to be.

“The first he heard say, ganging by, ‘lo, yonder the Thane of Cromarty’.

“T’other woman said again ‘of Moray, yonder I see the Thane’.

“The third said ‘yonder I see the king’.”

Rourke and Watson say the resemblance to the witches’ prophesy in Shakespeare’s Macbeth - in which the first hails him as “Thane of Glames”, the second as “Thane of Cawdor” and the third proclaims he shall “be King hereafter” - is too great to be co-incidental.

We simply need to turn back to page 170 of Holinshed to see where Shakespeare found this, and thanks to the extraordinary Folger collection we can see a much easier-to-read copy of Holinshed’s version of the story:

Shortlie after happened a strange and vncouth woonder, which afterward was the cause of much trouble in the realme of Scotland as ye shall after heare. It fortuned as Makbeth and Banquho iournied towards Fores, where the king then laie, they went sporting by the waie togither without other company saue onelie themselues, passing thorough the woods and fields, when suddenlie in the middest of a laund, there met them three women in strange and wild apparell, resembling creatures of elder world, whome when they attentiuelie beheld, woondering much at the sight, the first of them spake and said: All haile Makbeth, thane of Glammis (for he had latelie entered into that dignitie and office by the death of his father Sinell). The second of them said: Haile Makbeth thane of Cawder. But the third said: All haile Makbeth that heereafter shalt be king of Scotland.

I’ll allow you to examine that scene in Shakespeare and decide for yourself which of these two accounts was most likely Shakespeare’s source.

It’s entirely possible that Wyntoun’s work was a source for Holinshed (or Harrison, Leland, etc.), or a source of a source, or at some point they had a common source. But the idea suggested by this article, that Shakespeare somehow “lifted” Macbeth from Wyntoun, is absurd.

UPDATE: A follow-up post.

I gave a workshop today on incorporating Web 2.0 technologies into literacy instruction to improve student writing in the one-to-one classroom. A one-to-one classroom is one in which every student has a laptop with Internet access. That means that each learner has the ability to interact personally with a dynamic network of learners, both within the classroom and in the larger community.

This workshop was done in the shadow of a short-sighted article in the New York Times that dealt only with the problems of the one-to-one classroom, and none of the potential.

What these educators seem to be missing is that this is the world our students are living in right now. Case in point: FanFiction.net. This is a website where people can go and post original fan fiction. Thousands of our students are there right now, posting original stories, getting feedback from peers, and revising their work to make it more effective. Nobody’s asking them to do this; but there they are, using 21rst century tools to hone their writing skills. And if these are the skills we want students to learn in school, how can we not take advantage of every opportunity to bring the same tools into the classroom?

Anyway, I usually enjoy these workshops, but I was sick all day, so I was eager to come home, take some cold medicine, and go to sleep.

In my sleep, I had a dream that I was in France, around the turn of the nineteenth century. It was just after the Revolution, but before Napoleon was installed as Emperor. My guide was showing me around, and - in typical dream-like anachronistic fashion - he wanted me to see his radio. There was an earpiece and a microphone, both in the style of the period (if you can imagine what that would look like).

I put on the earpiece and heard a radio host talking about John Locke. I repeated the last line of what he said to indicate to my guide that I could hear what was being played, and suddenly the voice said “Is someone there?” I froze for a moment, unsure if he was talking to me, and the voice said “I think someone’s there. What’s your name?” “My name is Bill,” I said, into what I now realized was a microphone. The voice responded, “Welcome, Bill.”

My guide said that there were similar radios in homes all over the country and anyone could participate. I was impressed, but a little nervous about being put on the spot. “This is my first time doing this,” I stammered, and the voice said “Well, I’m glad you’re here. We no longer depend on the government and its puppets to provide our radio content. This is the radio of the people, and we can say anything we want.”

And that’s when I realized that this guy wasn’t the host of the radio show. He was another guy like me with a microphone. And if more people joined up, we could have an extended conversation, and that would be the show. This would truly be a new paradigm.

I woke up, still woozy from the cold medication, but I rushed to the computer to record my dream. My subconscious mind had conflated the changes in Europe during the Enlightenment with the current evolution of Internet technologies. During the Enlightenment, people started to perceive government less as an absolutist top-down sovereign who rules by divine right, and more as a function of citizens who can actually take part in shaping their own polity. Right now, a similar transformation is taking place in the way we think about the Internet - less as a one-way, top-down source of information, and more as an interactive community of which we all can be a part. Nice analysis, subconscious mind!

As we think about these new technologies, and how they might reshape education, if not society as a whole, we should remember that they are more than just fun new toys. They are a revolution.

Well, I’m off to the Shakespeare Teacher conference. I’m very excited about attending, but it means that I may have to step away from the blog for a few days. I’ll post when I can, but I’ll probably be more interested in blogging about the conference than in keeping up with my regular features.

But what if I could leave behind just one post that combines all of my regular features for the week? Why, we’d just have to call that a Shakespeare Teacher Special Feature! Here’s how it breaks down:

• I. Please find below eight brand-new riddles. This should more than satisfy fans of the Thursday Morning Riddle. Each answer will be one word. Please tell us which number you’re solving and your one-word answer.
• II. Once the riddles have been solved, place the eight one-word answers in the Venn Diagram below, using the numbers as guides. This will be your Conundrum. Can you guess the rules? Venn diagram explanation and sample here.
• III. The answer to Circle A (Riddles 1,3,5,7) will be a place. To stand in for the fact vs. fiction Headline Game, can you name three fictional television shows (of at least four seasons each) that are set in this real-life place?
• IV. The answer to Circle B (Riddles 2,3,6,7) will be a question. This is the Question of the Week. Once the games are done, feel free to discuss this question in the comments below. I have already registered my opinion elsewhere on the blog.
• V. The answer to Circle C (Riddles 7,4,6,5) will be a historical person. I was able to link this person to Sir Francis Bacon in four degrees, though that shouldn’t stop you from posting a longer response, or looking for a shorter one. Entries will be accepted until midnight on Thursday, March 22.

Use the comments section below to register any and all answers, discussion, and comments. I won’t be around much the next couple of days to moderate this, so please work together. If someone posts an answer you think is right, go ahead and say so and offer some words of encouragement. Also, feel free to pass this along to anyone you think may be interested. Here is the direct link.

If this is all too overwhelming or confusing, then just enjoy these eight riddles, and I’ll be back soon to talk about something simple, like Shakespeare.

The Riddles:

1. I act Maynard G. Krebs, and I Gilligan feign;
I’m the Mile High hub; leaving on a jet plane;
With the dinosaurs gone, I’m the last to remain;
And peppers, ham, onions, and eggs I contain.

2. I’m a weave, or the shirt type for which it is known;
I’m the college of Thatcher and William Gladstone;
I’m an unabridged lexicon, standing alone;
And I’m also the clay that preserves a fish bone.

3. I was first worn by Chaplin before his divorce;
I’m a race to be run by a three-year-old horse;
When in cars, I’m a wreck; when on skates, I use force;
And the kids on their soap boxes follow my course.

8. Both the lion and lamb are my two weather guides;
I’m the music of Sousa; the steps it provides;
When in basketball, madness; in history, strides;
In the middle, a novel; Beware of the Ides!

Who are we? 

UPDATE: Riddles 1-6 and 8 solved by Andrew.  Riddle 7 solved by DeLisa.  Circles B and C solved by Annalisa.  See comments for all answers. 

I found this really compelling, both in form and content:

I gave my take on the long-term ramifications of this in earlier posts Beggar’s Canyon and Optimism. What really struck me about this video was the idea that HTML tags define the form, while XML tags define the content. So when text from an XML document is exported, it can be classified and formatted by any number of disparate machines. That’s why I can have a blog, because I can just fill in fields in a form, rather than having to understand what a MySQL database is, or how to create one.

I also enjoyed the idea of the users of the Internet teaching the Internet about ideas that only humans can have. What is a hyperlink if not one person’s definition of the relationship between two realms of information? And with machines powerful enough to process those definitions in the aggregate, the Internet becomes an über-democratic negotiation about the nature of meaning. It’s a step beyond Wikipedia, where anyone can visit to add or revise content. It’s Google News, which proactively aggregates news stories from thousands of sources worldwide.

What about pictures? How can we really search for images, when computers can only see them in pixels? Some people tag their photos, but that’s just a start. Enter schemes like The ESP Game in which players log in and are randomly assigned an anonymous partner. The pair is then shown images and they have to come up with words to describe each image. Once they agree on a word, they may move on to the next image. They win if they can label a certain number of images in the pre-determined time. It’s packaged as a game, but what it’s really doing is finding humans to complete a task that computers can’t do, which is label a large quantity of images, so that they can join this network of information.

Some might be troubled by the thought of the “average” person defining the nature of information. Don’t we have specialists and experts who constitute a small minority of the population, but who can give us a much richer understanding of their field of study? Yes, and as their influence grows, we will be able to identify and access them much more easily through the shared mind of the Web. And they, in turn, will have greater access and ability to share their ideas with a wider audience. It will be a pure meritocracy.

There’s a website, FaceResearch.org, that allows you to digitally create the average of a number of different faces that you select or upload to their site. They discuss the hypothesis that the more average a face looks, the more attractive it is perceived to be. This may be partially because average faces tend to be more symmetrical and have smoother skin. But it’s a wonderfully egalitarian idea, if you think about it. The most attractive among us may not be any one of us, but may just be the average of all of us.

Web 2.0, then, may ultimately be a way of taking the average of all of our conceptions of the world and finding the most attractive face, the essential truths of human understanding, heretofore locked only within our collective unconscious. And then we may say, along with John Keats:

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’

Before clinical depression was first diagnosed, a person afflicted with the condition was referred to as melancholy. It was believed that our physical and emotional states were determined by the distribution of the four humours, or bodily fluids, each of which had a different effect if it fell out of balance. If you had an excess of black bile, for example, you were melancholic, and would seem moody and sad. Today, we understand this to be depression, but in Shakespeare’s time, the humours were the best science of the day, and the affliction was called melancholy.

Melancholy can be found throughout Shakespeare. Don John begins Much Ado About Nothing in a sadness. Hamlet is definitely depressed, and is often given the nickname The Melancholy Dane. You might argue that they both have reason to be. But Antonio’s first line of The Merchant of Venice, in fact the first line of the play, “In sooth, I know not why I am so sad,” leaves little doubt that Shakespeare was familiar with the concept of clinical depression by another name.

After Hamlet, perhaps the most famous melancholic in Shakespeare is Jaques from As You Like It. He is referred to in the play as “the melancholy Jaques” and even seems to take some pleasure in the description himself. From this, we might gather that he is depressed as well. But I would actually argue that he’s bipolar.

Bipolar disorder (which also used to be misdiagnosed as melancholy) is characterized by extreme mood swings between depression and bursts of manic energy. People with bipolar disorder used to be called manic depressive. And even though it wasn’t known about in Shakespeare’s time, Shakespeare must have been aware of different ways that “melancholy” affected certain people, and wrote Jaques as bipolar. How else can we explain the outburst by “the melancholy Jaques” in the beginning of Act 2, Scene 7:

A fool, a fool! I met a fool i’ the forest,
A motley fool; a miserable world!
As I do live by food, I met a fool;
Who laid him down and bask’d him in the sun,
And rail’d on Lady Fortune in good terms,
In good set terms, and yet a motley fool.
‘Good morrow, fool,’ quoth I. ‘No, sir,’ quoth he,
‘Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune.’
And then he drew a dial from his poke,
And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye,
Says very wisely, ‘It is ten o’clock;
Thus may we see,’ quoth he, ‘how the world wags:
’Tis but an hour ago since it was nine,
And after one hour more ’twill be eleven;
And so, from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale.’ When I did hear
The motley fool thus moral on the time,
My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,
That fools should be so deep-contemplative,
And I did laugh sans intermission
An hour by his dial. O noble fool!
A worthy fool! Motley’s the only wear.

Does that sound depressed to you? Does it sound neutral? Or does it sound manic? In addition to the numerous exclamation points, the exaggerated repetition (used as an emphatic) and run-on sentences (notice how many lines begin with “And”) seem to indicate manic speech patterns. Hamlet doesn’t have any speeches like that, or if he does, they are soliloquies, and can be more closely equated to the thoughts racing through his own mind than to his behavior in public.

Depression is marked by listlessness and inaction. Hamlet is almost defined by his inaction. He is withdrawn and other characters must come to him. But throughout As You Like It, Jaques actively seeks out relationships and interactions with the other characters, first with Amiens and the other lords, then with Touchstone (off-stage), then with the Duke Senior and his assembly, then with Orlando (!), then with Touchstone again, then with Ganymede/Rosalind (!!), and finally with Duke Frederick (!!!). He may be bitter and dismissive, but he can hardly be called aloof or withdrawn. When we first hear of Jaques, he is being mocked by his friends for his melancholy, but their story is of an extremely compassionate and sensitive soul who weeps for a wounded deer.

Jaques: Melancholic, Misunderstood, Bipolar.

Oh yeah, and Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream clearly has adult ADHD with delusions of grandeur. A topic, perhaps, for another time.

I have on occasion been called unpatriotic.

This is, of course, a highly offensive charge. The integrity of one’s patriotism is a precious jewel that must be protected. Someone who is unpatriotic is a non-person. Someone who is unpatriotic is a potential terrorist. Someone who is unpatriotic should be detained for questioning.

But lately, I’ve been questioning the idea of patriotism. What is it, actually? Love for one’s country? Okay. And then what?

I believe in American values. I love the philosophy that all people are created equal. I love the idea of a melting pot of cultures. I love living in a country that is ruled by the majority will of the people, while still protecting the rights of the minority and the individual. Does that make me patriotic?

I think America sometimes does bad things in the world and I think we should stop. I think our current leadership is reckless and irresponsible when yielding American power. I think that we have made a lot of progress in securing the rights for all of our people, but we still have a considerable way to go. Does that make me unpatriotic?

I was against the Iraq War. Did that make me unpatriotic? I’m still against it. Does that make me patriotic?

Does being patriotic mean valuing American lives over lives of non-Americans? If so, is patriotism really something to be respected and admired? Does patriotism for people in other countries mean valuing the lives of their countrymen over Americans? If so, is patriotism still something to be respected and admired?

I would hate to think that something as important and cherished as patriotism was only admirable within one’s own country. That would make it shallow and meaningless, and patriotism is much too important for that. Who do we want to be patriotic? Can patriotism be criticized in those whose nations have committed horrible atrocities in the past? What about when we’ve been that nation?

Are these light and airy questions of no consequence, asked by a sheltered academic who takes for granted the comfortable freedoms provided by his country?  Or do our answers to these questions affect our policies - who we allow to cross our borders, what standards we apply to the decision to go to war, how we structure international trade, how we respond to human suffering abroad - making them of the utmost importance? 

And does even asking these questions make me unpatriotic?  Or is asking difficult questions in a democratic society highly patriotic?

So with all of that in mind, the Question of the Week is this:

What does patriotism mean to you?

On this day, we remember a visionary leader who fought against injustice and worked tirelessly for a better society.

But as we remember and honor the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s enormous contribution to the civil rights movement, let us also remember and honor what he stood for later in his life. FAIR published this article in 1995, explaining the migration of King’s focus, and the reluctance of the media to follow:

In the early 1960s, when King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination in the South, most major media were his allies. Network TV and national publications graphically showed the police dogs and bullwhips and cattle prods used against Southern blacks who sought the right to vote or to eat at a public lunch counter.

But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation’s fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without “human rights” — including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.

Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for “radical changes in the structure of our society” to redistribute wealth and power.

“True compassion,” King declared, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

You should really read the whole thing. The article goes on to talk about King’s opposition to the Vietnam War, which has chilling resonance today, in a way that it wouldn’t have in 1995. But the article returns to King’s efforts to fight poverty:

In his last months, King was organizing the most militant project of his life: the Poor People’s Campaign. He crisscrossed the country to assemble “a multiracial army of the poor” that would descend on Washington — engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be — until Congress enacted a poor people’s bill of rights. Reader’s Digest warned of an “insurrection.”

King’s economic bill of rights called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America’s cities. He saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its “hostility to the poor” — appropriating “military funds with alacrity and generosity,” but providing “poverty funds with miserliness.”

You can see his increasing focus on economic justice in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. After discussing the evil of racial injustice, King moves on to note that, “A second evil which plagues the modern world is that of poverty.” His rhetorical eloquence doesn’t lend itself well to excerpt, but his conclusion cuts right to the point:

So it is obvious that if man is to redeem his spiritual and moral “lag”, he must go all out to bridge the social and economic gulf between the “haves” and the “have nots” of the world. Poverty is one of the most urgent items on the agenda of modern life.

Perhaps, if King had lived, he might have helped us bridge that gulf. Perhaps those special qualities he had within him that helped him win those essential victories in the struggle for civil rights might have helped him solve that puzzle we have yet to crack even today. Hurricane Katrina briefly blew the curtains back, and revealed the shameful truth on a national stage. But the winds have died down now, and the audience has lost interest and turned away.

So on this day, let’s remember King for who he was, and for what he believed in. For what he did, and for what he might have done. For the dream that he helped move toward reality, and for the nightmare from which he tried to awaken us.

There has been some Internet buzz over an obnoxious Christopher Hitchen’s piece (is there any other kind) in a recent issue of Vanity Fair. This post isn’t about the piece or the buzz, but if you’re interested, you can read some good responses here and here by people who seem to like Hitchens less than I do and are willing to use more ribald language than I am to say so.

The reason I even bring it up at all is that he cites a study from Stanford University that’s far more worth discussing than anything he has to say about it:

According to a new Stanford University School of Medicine study, gender affects the way a person’s brain responds to humor.

The first-of-its-kind imaging study showed that women activate the parts of the brain involved in language processing and working memory more than men when viewing funny cartoons. Women were also more likely to activate with greater intensity the part of the brain that generates rewarding feelings in response to new experiences.

Okay, that makes sense. The brain is stimulated when it has to readjust to an unexpected outcome to a scenario, like the caption of a cartoon or the punchline of a joke. The result of this dissonance is perceived by our brains as funny, and this study demonstrates that women experience the effect more profoundly than men.

But, wait a minute! Doesn’t that sound a lot like the effect that was described by the University of Liverpool study that I blogged about last week:

Professor Philip Davis, from the University’s School of English, said: “The brain reacts to reading a phrase such as ‘he godded me’ from the tragedy of Coriolanus, in a similar way to putting a jigsaw puzzle together. If it is easy to see which pieces slot together you become bored of the game, but if the pieces don’t appear to fit, when we know they should, the brain becomes excited. By throwing odd words into seemingly normal sentences, Shakespeare surprises the brain and catches it off guard in a manner that produces a sudden burst of activity - a sense of drama created out of the simplest of things.”

Just like a joke! Except that instead of a one-shot deal that makes us laugh, Shakespeare hits us with shift after shift until we’re carried away on a brain-chemical high. When Shakespeare finally gives us a release, it can be extremely intense emotionally. But the two studies appear to be describing the very same process.

So, based on these two studies, one might expect women to be more profoundly affected by Shakespeare than men would be. That is to say that women would feel more intensely the rewarding feelings (Stanford study) that Shakespeare’s use of language has been demonstrated to generate (Liverpool study).

I don’t mean to be an armchair brain science researcher or anything, but this might make for an interesting follow-up study. And clearly, some informal preliminary field research on my part is in order immediately.

I saw this story on the front page of the local newspapers on my way to work yesterday morning, but haven’t really had time to comment until now.

WASHINGTON - President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant, the Daily News has learned.

The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open people’s mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.

I don’t want to go on a rant about “worst civil liberties abuse yet” because the phrase is overworn these days, and it will be hard to top the Military Commissions Act of 2006. But I do want to address the broader issue of this and other signing statements that President Bush keeps making to re-define the bills that come across his desk.

A signing statement is a written statement made by the president when signing a bill into law. It is entered into the “Legislative History” section of the United States Congressional Code and Administrative News (USCCAN) and can be used by the courts in interpreting the law.

Just to repeat, the signing statement “contradicted the bill he had just signed” and can be used by the courts in interpreting the law.

This truly isn’t an issue of conservatives vs. liberals, but rather the scope of the powers of any president regardless of political affiliation, though there have been a number of serious concerns raised about this particular president abusing powers he may not actually have:

Presidential signing statements that assert President Bush’s authority to disregard or decline to enforce laws adopted by Congress undermine the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers, according to a report released today by a blue-ribbon American Bar Association task force.

To address these concerns, the task force urges Congress to adopt legislation enabling its members to seek court review of signing statements that assert the President’s right to ignore or not enforce laws passed by Congress, and urges the President to veto bills he feels are not constitutional.

If the president vetoes a bill, Congress has the opportunity to override that veto. These are the checks and balances that have been so carefully built into our system. If the framers of the Constitution wanted the president to be able to modify bills, they would have given the office the power of the line-item veto. But the Supreme Court has ruled the presidential line-item veto unconstitutional, as the Constitution clearly grants all legislative powers to Congress. But President Bush has made it clear that he still wants the line-item veto. Failing that, he will continue to use the backdoor of the signing statement, unless Congress takes the recommendation of the American Bar Association and stops him.

I’m no constitutional scholar, but I’m pretty sure the framers didn’t intend for the executive to be able to make a statement defining what a law was going to mean. If President Bush really has this power, I disagree that he’s been abusing it. If anything, he has shown remarkable restraint. Imagine the many, many things that President Bush can do if he does actually have the power to make a law just by making a statement. But it seems pretty clear that he has no such power. He should not be permitted to behave as though he does.