The West Wing - The Supremes [Video]

In this episode of the west wing (5x17), there is a quick scene where a new supreme court justice debates with Charlie Young (a character in the show) over the validity or invalidity of affirmitive action.

He deconstructs Charlie's argument and suggests a couple of better ones.

I couldn't find an embed version so you can view it from this post, but did find this clip on a Chinese site. Skip to 4:45 in the video time to see the scene:
http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/dMBTky_8k9E/

Learn cross-examination from the pro [Video, Lecture]

The Ethos Debate blog posted a very interesting video lecture from the Vector debate meeting with Jordan Lorence, a lawyer, on the subject of cross examination.

It's worth the time it takes to watch, both to learn how to question people in cross examination, as well as how to defend oneself by seeing what tricks are used.

The following is the first part, and you can follow the links to the other 11.



Links:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpfLLySHxnk
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTTKJTU8F-0
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NLAVrezUBM
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqhKfbe-EV4
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni_dBe_SNZo
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uXPmlzLQAo
Part 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v7XQq3j3xI
Part 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srP7iMPfgpY
Part 9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYlP97Kszlk
Part 10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTvMw3is12A
Part 11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQdgZ8KUKtw
Part 12: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUBJzzGQeTM

Logical fallacies in presidential debates [Video]

In this video from HowStuffWorks titled "Persuasive Techniques: How Political Candidates Debate", political expert Hal Bruno explains and demonstrates logical fallacies by examples from historical presidential debates.

In this program, viewers will experience firsthand the elements used by political candidates in debate. Primary source footage from some of the great debates of the late 20th century is featured.

A demonstration of the non-commutativity of the English language [Video]

Terry Tao writes on his What's New blog about a video he came across, which exploits a rhetorical trick he haven't seen before:

If nothing else, it’s a convincing (albeit unsubtle) demonstration that the English language is non-commutative (or perhaps non-associative); a linguistic analogue of the swindle, if you will.

Of course, the trick relies heavily on sentence fragments that negate or compare; I wonder if it is possible to achieve a comparable effect without using such fragments.