LD Workshop

I'm workin on getting my stuff together for this one... coming soon.

The March-April topic (for quals, state, and national) is:

Resolved: hate crime enhancements (HCE'S) are unjust in the United States.

Hey, they heard my prayer for a good topic. Cool. Start with some definitions:

The definition of "Hate Crime" in the United States, according to the Department of Justice, says:

Hate Crime: A criminal offense against a person, property, or society that is motivated by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.

Black's Law Dictionary defines justice as:

Legally right; lawful; equitable.

Analysis and Evidence for Affirmative

The value in this debate is fairly straightforward for most people - justice - but if you can build a case on something else, go right ahead. Even if you don't come right out and value justice, you will end up talking about it anyway. The value criterion will be much more interesting - do we adhere to the Constitution? Or is justice fulfilled through something greater than law? My value criterion will be Egalitarianism. Here's why:

The aff case will likely focus on how HCE's violate the principle of justice. First of all, justice is easier to argue in this topic than it usually is, because the topic narrows the meaning. It tells you that we are talking about the legal system of the United States. Since we are focusing only on this country, look to the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. If the law gives you what is due to you, what exactly are you getting? Ignore rights and such for now; legally speaking, all citizens are to be equally protected under the law. The engravement on the front of the Supreme Court building even says so.

Think of a criminal punishment as a price. The criminal commits a crime, he pays that price. We know that price and value are related; e.g. if something has a high value, it has a higher price.

Now think of how this applies - two crimes with identical circumstances, perpetrators, a modus operandi could carry different prices depending on who the victim is. If one victim warrants harsher punishment and therefore higher price than another, the court has failed to maintain equal protection of equal citizens.

The second main point of the affirmative should be to critique the Department of Justice's definition of hate crime. Once again, the defintion is:

A criminal offense against a person, property, or society that is motivated by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.

There are a number of problems with the law:

1. It does not establish adequate criteria for determining hate.

(more stuff coming soon)

Congress Time

This is a bit of an experiment in sharing resources. As much fun as it may be to bullshit, everyone is going to need to be prepared with a good case for each Congress bill in order to do well at Quals. The idea is that we can all help with case writing. BE PREPARED FOR EITHER SIDE OF THE DEBATES.

First bill first: A Resolution Regarding Low-Emission Vehicles

I am inclined to go against this one, but then again, I go against everything. First of all, what the hell is a SULEV or ZEV?

About LEV's

Controlled pollution categories are:
Hydrocarbons
Nitrous oxides
Carbon monoxide
The
well to wheel emission balance is not included in the classification as
SULEV,
with certain fuel generation paths it might well prove to be more
polluting for
the wider environment.

So it sounds like the EPA (or whoever defines the terms) says pollution is composed of those three types of emissions. Funny how they forget about the production of the vehicles.

(more later)

Hillary Drinks the bong water while Ron Paul poisons it

Ron Paul definitely just stole some votes from the liberal Hillary followers. The ones that Obama hasn't already bought, I mean. In the Myspace/MTV "Super Dialogue," he scored over 60% in the poll with a clever strategy.

While Hillary went after the young liberal voters of Myspace with her progressive bullshit, Paul redefined the Republican party in order to incorporate many of these people. He is the only candidate who seems to realize that the true conservative was Goldwater, not Reagan or Bush. That means you can, and SHOULD be removed from social issues as a government (or at least a president).

Paul made a profound point when he observed that young people aren't looking for government involvement, entitlements, and high taxes. Hillary assumes they are. Instead, according to Paul, young people vote for democrats because they don't want to be controlled by corporations and a corrupt government that tells them how to be safe and moral. It wasn't that the Democrats succeeded in convincing them in the past, but because the Republicans failed them. Bush is no exception; in fact he is the biggest culprit of all. That's why 52% of viewers were "just not buying it," while at least that many "were sold" on Paul.

in short, Ron Paul realizes that the next generation doesn't want to be a socialist movement, but just free Americans.

Translated for the rest of RP's internet following: Ron Paul FTW