Afghanistan has mega attitudinal inherency
25
February
This is crazy Military General Reportedly Ordered Unlawful Operations Against Members Of Congress
Author Archives: Scott Phillips
Going for Framework on the Aff: Its hip to be square pt 1
24
February
Debate arguments often operate like fashion trends; they emerge on the scene, gain popularity, that popularity peaks and then declines. Some arguments, like multiple counterplans, then experience a resurgence years later. For some time now it has been very difficult to gain any traction by going for framework arguments on the affirmative vs negative critiques. [...]
Some Notes on Impacts
10
February
I’m somewhat baffled by many of the debates I see lately (as well as with the decisions of other judges when I listen to them) with the strange focus on terminal impacts, both in what percentage of time is spent debating them, and then even after a lot of time is spent arguing defense to [...]
BFHS Rap Up
2
February
You can find the results packet, bracket, and all 21 ballots from the final round here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page.
New Kagan Hegemony Article
23
January
Has some good cards, including responses to the Mearsheimer article Alderete posted a little while ago Others have. For decades “realist” analysts have called for a strategy of “offshore balancing.” Instead of the United States providing security in East Asia and the Persian Gulf, it would withdraw its forces from Japan, South Korea, and the [...]
Walt Post on History
22
January
Has some interesting points, on Afghanistan Yet this sadly turns out to be no universal law: There is no inexorable evolutionary march that replaces our bad, old ideas with smart, new ones. If anything, the story of the last few decades of international relations can just as easily be read as the maddening persistence of [...]
1AR Choice
19
January
The 1AR, like the lamer Matrix movies, is all about choice. A good 1AR picks from the options presented in the 2AC and hammers home a few key points, it doesn’t crappily extend every argument. I feel like past posts have gone into why this is so ad nausea, so this post will take for [...]
Unconventional Wisdom
7
January
This months edition of the FP feature has some good stuff: Economies Can’t Just Keep On Growing, by Thomas Homer-Dixon Homeland Security Hasn’t Made Us Safer, by Anne Applebaum China’s Rise Doesn’t Mean War…, by Joseph S. Nye Jr. …And China Isn’t Beating the U.S., by Daniel W. Drezner Understanding History Won’t Help Us Make [...]
Sidebar?
4
January
Interested in opinions from judges or debaters. A while ago the nooch and I had a brief discussion on here about judges intervening in cx when one team is clearly giving a long drawn out BS answer (which nooch dubbed the filibuster) A few other instances I have been observing semi frequently have me wondering [...]