Melanie's Decision

[Melanie Johnson]

I vote Aff.

Extra topicality is a blip in the 1nr unsure why this is a reason to
reject the team, I flowed the words plan ET but that was about it.
Also, any understanding of the argument came for me after looking for
the argument in the speech doc. As of the 1NR for me, it was really
only impacted by limits and I think aff winning limits debate. A very
persuasive argument for me would have been if the 1NR had developed
this more in the context of eminent domain and pointed to the abuse in
the 2AC on the States CP.

I think the aff interpretation is better for Limits, Education/Portable skill.

I agree that, the negative interpretation arbitrarily limits out
vehicles, selective underlining - 311 vehicles affirmatives and only 5
more pipelines affirmatives - there are checks against all 311 of the
vehicles becoming affs but there seems to be much greater potential
for explosion of the topic with the negative's interpretation. I'm
not really sure what the importance or the impact is of all of the gas
v liquid stuff didn't know what the impact was to it.

I don't think the Chamber of Commerce evidence is better than the
Church evidence - the Church evidence is not arbitrarily underlined
and is from more qualified source - experts in transportation, the
DOT; I agree that the benefit of the Chamber of Commece evidence is
that it both defines a list and excludes i.e. creates a clearer
briteline, but I am convinced that is perhaps an arbitrary limiting
out the aff and it is probably bad for the topic and for the aff to
limit out this aff.

I think the DOT is still a check on pipelines affirmatives - the
reason vehicles wouldn't be allowed by the DoT briteline is because
they are not infrastructure as part of the negative interpretation of
the topic. I didn't interpret this argument as being an
interpretation that all things under DOT jurisdiction are allowed but
that it was a check on the CI. For example, the DOT regulates other
things (not an argument in the debate, but, for example there is a DOT
agency called RITA that just does research) that that would not be
topical under the aff interpretation because it's clearly not
infrastructure.

I think the aff interpretation is good for aff ground - has an answer
to the states counterplan, good for education (vital aff ground the
api evidence) API evidence - we would miss out on an area of the topic
we should be talking about if we went with the neg limit. As a random
sidenote, I felt some cognitive dissoance with the neg's argument that
the check against the explosion of vehicles affirmatives under their
interp is that the states counterplan would solve them all.

I do think the 2NR is very good on Limits and why it is important -
limits internal link to ground, they are especially important at the
beginning of the year, depth is better than breadth, etc.