However, instrumentalising the law and the court system for the purposes of this debate seems both misdirected and counterproductive.
For the purposes of this debate I have chosen to focus on these aspects, but will try to balance this as we proceed.
This defeats the purpose of the debate, and as an organizer you should strive for the best results a debate can have.
"It's a private event, we're a private sponsor," Ms. Brown said, and in any case, "The purpose of the debate is for the television audience at home, not for the rather small number of people in the hall who are there to represent the host institutions that made this happen".
"The purpose of the debate last week was to try to create some impetus for the banks to start renegotiating these mortgages in a positive way and the industry fought it," Durbin, who last week concluded banks "frankly own the place," told the Huffington Post.
The purpose of the debates is to let the people see and hear the candidates, so that they can make a choice.
If it were, millions of TV viewers would be distracted and possibly biased by the reactions of that audience, at the risk of defeating the entire purpose of these debates: to give the country the opportunity to view and evaluate the candidates being themselves, pure and simple.
The distribution of the burden of Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes may be germane to an argument about the fairness of America's comprehensive scheme of taxes, but it's not germane to the argument Mr Obama actually made.Admittedly, it's difficult to know how best to treat payroll taxes for the purpose of this kind of debate.
If, for the purposes of this theoretical debate, we are comparing achievements by athletes competing for Britain or the home nations (without prising open that can of Murray-related worms) in international competition then scarcity value must count for something.
