Resources NFCFL Fall Gathering Novice Congress Workshop

Here are my thoughts . . .

. . . on what makes Congress special.

. . . on how to select a bill topic.

. . . on how Congress judges think (to the extent we do).

And here's a manifesto of sorts.

TOC 2017 Chamber C Prelims

My commentary here is . . . a little uneven.  More useful than nothing, I hope.  TOC prelims chambers are like starting in a tough semis chamber.  Your judges and I had difficult decisions to make.

As always, use whatever makes sense and ignore the rest.

I didn't go on my usual "sanctity of evidence" rant (see earlier posts if you'd like) at the beginning of the round to see what would happen if I didn't.  It might have hurt a couple of people, but generally I did not see much of a difference.

Emory 2017 Chamber 7

The usual disclaimer:  Take whatever makes sense to you and ignore the rest of my lunatic ravings.

Chamber 7 notes.  Y'all were really good.  My top two were obvious but after that I struggled.

Incantation by Czeslaw Milosz

Something I've been thinking about lately . . .

Incantation by Czeslaw Milosz

Human reason is beautiful and invincible. 

No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books, 

No sentence of banishment can prevail against it. 

It establishes the universal ideas in language, 

And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice 

With capital letters, lie and oppression with small. 

It puts what should be above things as they are, 

Is an enemy of despair and a friend of hope. 

It does not know Jew from Greek or slave from master, 

Giving us the estate of the world to manage. 

It saves austere and transparent phrases 

From the filthy discord of tortured words. 

It says that everything is new under the sun, 

Opens the congealed fist of the past. 

Beautiful and very young are Philo-Sophia 

And poetry, her ally in the service of the good. 

As late as yesterday Nature celebrated their birth, 

The news was brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo. 

Their friendship will be glorious, their time has no limit. 

Their enemies have delivered themselves to destruction. 

Berkeley, 1968

What Congress Could Use: Debates about People

One effect of requiring Expert Solvency Advocates for any legislation (which couldn't ever be a rule but should be a custom throughout the activity, esp. for coaches, summer camp staff, and--oh my God, please--tournament organizers) is to limit debate from "the US should implement my daydream"  legislation to the thousands of actual real-world policy options the US must choose from at home and abroad.

Some people might find the "No ESA=No Way" limit too constricting, but there's an unjustifiably neglected area of debate that features ESAs:

Debates about people.

A few years ago, before it was cool, then (post-11/9) deeply, deeply uncool again, one of my debaters wrote a resolution urging that Edward Snowden be granted clemency.  This was the stated position of the New York Times editors, so we had our Expert Solvency Advocate covered.

Congress kids treated this as radioactive, however, and I don't think it ever made the agenda, but I think it would have been a really interesting debate if it had been given a chance, touching on both larger issues and potential crimes--the kind of courtroom drama a lot of debaters would enjoy.

There's a constitutional basis for this, too, which will be a headline issue through February:  the confirmation process.

We tried something like this last year with our "Confirm Merrick Garland" resolution.  Again, no luck.  Seemed too political, I guess.

Resolutions of impeachment--hey, they're coming--are also debates about people.  I'm hoping that one of my debaters will be the first in America to run this for our new president, but someone surely will.

(Here's my suggested intro:  I want to begin by putting my cards on the table.  I'm a committed partisan, a Democrat since way back in high school, and I believe that it is to my party's advantage to retain Donald Trump as president because that makes him the face of the Republican party.   But I think parties and partisans ought to set aside their own narrow interests and do what's right for the country.  And that's why the President's violations of the Constitution's emoluments clause justify this resolution to impeach.)

One could also use resolutions to remove lower-rung people from the executive branch.  (Cough--Bannon.)

Anyway, Congress kids are a deeply conservative bunch in terms of the activity.  To some extent that's a good thing.  We're still comparatively light on jargon, though I heard the word "counterplan" three or four times recently.

My squad's push to use real legislation as their legislation has gained some national traction over the years, but things like Glenbrooks Finals 2016 still happen:  three bills to choose from, all from the NSDA November packet, but none with an Expert Solvency Advocate, meaning that all anyone had to do to win for the negative (from my paleo-policy perspective) was to ask, as the 2nd place finisher on my parli ballot did, "Notice how no one proposing that we pass this legislation can point to a single outside source saying we should do it?"

So if Debates about People are going to be a thing, it'll have to come from tournament-provided out-round legislation.  If anyone's listening at Sunvitational, Emory, or Harvard, I wouldn't mind you running with this idea.

If anyone knows those folks, and they happen to ask you for ideas, maybe steer them here?
________________________________

I'd take this even further, honestly.  We could have really interesting debates about naming or renaming post offices after certain important, controversial figures.  Or national holidays.

I guess I can admit that this is going too far, but can everyone else admit that it's better than many of the debates we have?  And a debate designating the month of May as National Funk Heritage Month would be educational, worthwhile, and fun.

And I'm sure we can find an Expert Solvency Advocate for it somewhere.  :)

Glenbrooks 2016

As always, take whatever's useful and ignore the rest.

Here's prelims.

And here's finals.

Minneapple 2016

As always, I'm a glass-half-empty kind of coach, always hoping for the best--ask my debaters--and I can't turn that off.  

Use what makes sense to you and completely ignore and forget anything that just seems cranky and random. 

Here's Chamber A.

And here's Semifinals A.