The motion before the undergraduates had been "British politics is in the pocket of the media", and, in the exhilarated post-debate atmosphere, one dinner-jacketed journalistic insider who had come from London to speak could no longer contain his piece of political gossip.
In the interests of producing a more consensual debating atmosphere, the chamber itself was built in a horseshoe shape to eliminate the British Parliament-style confrontational rows of opposing legislators braying abuse at each other across a central well.
While the Republican presidential race has often devolved into a bare-knuckle affair, particularly during the televised debates, the atmosphere on Friday was far more genteel.
Some of his last ideas reflected the cooling vs heating of the atmosphere debate.
An hour before the debate started, the atmosphere had been highly charged, as groups gathered for silent prayers for the dead men.
After the debate, the tetchy atmosphere was highlighted in a series of exchanges between senior figures, with the leave campaign's Michael Gove confronting his counterpart Will Straw, who also went toe to toe with Dominic Raab.
In behalf of anti-slavery forces throughout the country, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania named David Wilmot offered an amendment (August 8, 1846) to the bill forbidding slavery in the new territory, thus precipitating bitter national debate in an atmosphere of heightening sectional conflict.
Passage of the bill, by a vote of 337 to 79, was the climax of a remarkable 18-hour period in which both the House and the Senate adopted complex, far-reaching antiterrorism legislation with little debate in an atmosphere of edgy alarm, as federal law enforcement officials warned that another attack could be imminent.
The debates had an atmosphere of a prize fight and drew crowds in the thousands.
By all accounts, the recent actions under Mr. Bernanke have been taken in an atmosphere of debate and even anguish.
