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http://republicans.transportation.house.gov

http://www.joc.com/node/411533

this 1 link has to have 20 applications for it on both sides of the field.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/

- Nick

http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/

In some situations when someone ran a bull-sh*t T on me in parli I have said that if the judge votes on that POS I will forfeit the next round. I only use that when I really think the T is bogus and I am dead serious. I do not want to play my game if others are going to exclude me from it because they don’t want to talk about something I do.

Besides, destroy debate should be a tag for the fairness standard/voter. ‘My definition is superior” belongs on the education or competing interpretations standard/voter. So we should be using both; it’s not zero-sum.

“This topic will give the debaters a chance to debate a key domestic policy. We have debated foreign policy topics for 3 of the past 4 years. It would be educational for our community to delve into our domestic affairs for a year.”

Ergo, the Negative could argue that, although the Affirmative interpretation is artful and semantically defensible, a totally-USA interpretation of the situs of reform is superior for two distinct reasons: (1) Framer’s Intent; and (2) Superior Educational Value. (I would expect the debater to specifically cite to the Topic Paper for support, and combined with Nick’s definitions, this becomes a strong argument.)

BTW: I hope that NFA debaters this year will begin to move away from the hackneyed inflammatory rhetoric typically used in other formats (“The Affirmative definition DESTROYS DEBATE…”) and towards reasonable persuasion (“My definition is clearly superior and should be adopted because…”). Nothing in the NFA rules either states or implies that good debaters cannot also be good orators.

The big problem is, when debate is treated more of a game than an educational enterprise, is that a team who is running an international case, will have prepared MORE for topicality than the negative. They will have answers to all the knee-jerk reactions and thus have the upper hand. By running topicality, perhaps as the only defense in that case, you are playing into the aff’s advantage. Rather than debating transportation infrastructure you are debating topicality.

I wonder, if you run against an international case, if the same generic negative solvency evidence will apply – ie, the negative solvency block you can run against any transportation infrastructure case would also be applicable in that case. I can almost guarantee that the ONLY front line answers the affirmative debater will have will be the topicality answers.

Bottom line, when you run against crazy cases, do not just run topicality – you are already running uphill because their 1AR answers will be STRONG….