BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Libya didn't attack US; President not authorized for war

Bruce Ackerman. "Obama's Unconstitutional War." Foreign Policy. March 24th, 2011: "After the Vietnam War, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution, which granted the president the power to act unilaterally for 60 days in response to a 'national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.' The law gave the chief executive an additional 30 days to disengage if he failed to gain congressional assent during the interim. But, again, these provisions have little to do with the constitutionality of the Libyan intervention, since Libya did not attack our 'armed forces.' The president failed to mention this fundamental point in giving Congress notice of his decision on Monday, in compliance with another provision of the resolution. Without an armed 'attack.' there is no compelling reason for the president to cut Congress out of a crucial decision on war and peace."[3]
US merely supporting NATO; War Powers inapplicable

Obama Administration letter to Congress justifying Libya engagement, June 15th, 2011: "The President has honored his commitment to focus the preponderance of our military effort on the front end of operations in Libya, using our unique assets to destroy key regime military targets and air defense capabilities in order to establish a no-fly zone and enable protection of civilians as part of the enforcement of UNSCR 1973. These actions set the conditions so that, after a limited time, command of these operations transferred to NATO. Since that April 4 transition, U.S. military involvement has been limited to a supporting role, enabling our allies and partners to ensure the safety of Libyan civilians."
Libya war weakens War Powers; makes going to war easier

Bruce Ackerman and Oona Hathaway. "Death of the War Powers Act." Washington Post. May 17th, 2011: "Once Obama crosses the Rubicon, future presidents will simply cite Libya when they unilaterally commit America to far more ambitious NATO campaigns. If nothing happens, history will say that the War Powers Act was condemned to a quiet death by a president who had solemnly pledged, on the campaign trail, to put an end to indiscriminate warmaking."
Libya war illegally circumvents Congr approval

Reps. Dennis Kucinich and Walter Jones filed a lawsuit against President Obama in federal court against President Obama to “challenge the commitment of the United States to war in Libya absent the required constitutional legal authority [...] the executive branch’s circumvention of Congress and its use of international organizations such as the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to authorize the use of military force abroad, in violation of the Constitution.”[4]
Regime change is not a military objective in Libya.

Text of Obama's Speech On Libya: "A Responsibility To Act." NPR.org. March 28th, 2011: "Of course, there is no question that Libya — and the world — would be better off with Gadhafi out of power. I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal, and will actively pursue it through non-military means. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake. The task that I assigned our forces — to protect the Libyan people from immediate danger, and to establish a no-fly zone — carries with it a U.N. mandate and international support. It's also what the Libyan opposition asked us to do. If we tried to overthrow Gadhafi by force, our coalition would splinter. We would likely have to put U.S. troops on the ground to accomplish that mission, or risk killing many civilians from the air. The dangers faced by our men and women in uniform would be far greater. So would the costs and our share of the responsibility for what comes next."
US is clearly engaged in sustained hostilities in Libya

Glenn Greenwald. "The illegal war in Libya." Salon. May 19th, 2011: "It was equally clear from the start that this Orwellian-named 'kinetic humanitarian action' was, in fact, a 'war' in every sense, including the Constitutional sense, but that's especially undeniable now. While the President, in his after-the-fact speech justifying the war, pledged that 'broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake,' it is now clear that is exactly what is happening. 'Regime change' quickly became the explicit goal. NATO has repeatedly sought to kill Gadaffi with bombs; one attack killed his youngest son and three grandchildren and almost killed his whole family including his wife, forcing them to flee to Tunisia. If sending your armed forces and its AC-130s and drones to another country to attack that country's military and kill its leader isn't a 'war,' then nothing is."
Justifications for Libya war irrelevant to Congressional authority.

Dem Rep Dennis Kucinich April 19th letter to colleagues on Libya conflict: "While we may not all agree on the merits of military intervention in Libya, we can all agree that Congress must have the opportunity to have a full and ample debate on the commitment of U.S. Armed Forces to a war abroad. The Constitution is clear: Article 1, Section 8 provides only Congress with the ability to declare war or authorize the use of military force."
War Powers covers US forces playing supporting role in wars.

Text of War Powers, Interpretation of Joint Resolution: "For purposes of this chapter, the term 'introduction of United States Armed Forces' includes the assignment of members of such armed forces to command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military forces of any foreign country or government when such military forces are engaged, or there exists an imminent threat that such forces will become engaged, in hostilities."[1]
Troops needn't be on ground to call Libya engagement war.

David Bromwich. "The Bipartisan Case Against U.S. Involvement in Libya." The Huffington Post. June 20th, 2011: "Jason Linkins has summed up [the White House's] legalistic peculiarity: 'If forces from the United States aren't actually dying, it's not a war, never mind the fact that U.S. forces are, nevertheless, actively engaged in an attempt to kill people.' By the same logic that says a one-sided air war is not a war, a president may launch hundreds of missiles against an enemy on his own initiative, so long as the targets have no means of retaliation. [...] How to account for the sophistry of this attempt to placate Congress by pretending that the Libya War is not a war? The Obama White House, it would seem, is creating an executive license for purely offensive wars, so long as no American casualties are incurred."
Merit pay motivates teachers to over-focus on test scores

Vivian Troen and Katherine C. Boles. "How ‘Merit Pay’ Squelches Teaching". Boston Globe. September 28, 2005: "The idea of merit pay, sometimes called pay for performance, was born in England around 1710. Teachers' salaries were based on their students' test scores on examinations in reading, writing, and arithmetic. The result was that teachers and administrators became obsessed with financial rewards and punishments, and curriculums were narrowed to include only the testable basics. ... So drawing, science, and music disappeared. Teaching became more mechanical as teachers found that drill and rote repetition produced the 'best' results. Both teachers and administrators were tempted to falsify results, and many did. The plan was ultimately dropped, signaling the fate of every merit plan initiative ever since."
Merit-based pay has succeeded in many places

Steven Malanga. "Why Merit Pay Will Improve Teaching". About.com. Summer 2001: "Cincinnati’s public school system, the first to experiment with performance incentives, persuaded its teachers’ union in 1997 to do a test run of merit pay. Two years later, a ten-school pilot program, designed by administrators and teachers, got under way. Essential to union support was the pilot’s proposed use of peers to evaluate teachers. 'The peer evaluators, who have no stake in how teachers are judged, are important to the perception of the fairness of the system,' observes Kathleen Ware, associate superintendent of Cincinnati schools. Using Danielson’s criteria of good teaching—they include class preparation and clarity of presentation—the principals and peer evaluators devoted 20 to 30 hours to assessing every teacher in the ten chosen schools. Based on how they scored, teachers then wound up in one of five salary categories, with "novices" making the least money and 'accomplished' teachers the most. [...] The pilot proved successful. A majority of teachers involved found it fair and judged the standards used as appropriate for the whole school district. The city’s board of education adopted it in the spring of 2000, and, in a subsequent election, union members signed on."
Teachers should be paid more; based on merit

Darcy Ann Olsen. "Teachers Deserve Merit Pay, Not Special Interest Pay". CATO. May 22, 2001: "This article appeared on cato.org on May 22, 2001. "Teachers need more money, according to a new survey by the American Federation of Teachers. Noting that teacher salaries last year climbed 3.2 percent, or 0.2 percent less than inflation, AFT president Sandra Feldman said, 'Salaries must at least become competitive to attract and keep quality teachers.'"
Merit-based pay helps attract and keep quality teachers

Darcy Ann Olsen. "Teachers Deserve Merit Pay, Not Special Interest Pay". CATO. May 22, 2001: "Pay for performance is not a new concept. It works for businessmen, lawyers, waitresses, travel agents, journalists, athletes, accountants, in fact, for most of us. Why not teachers? If a school faces a teacher shortage, let wages increase to attract them. Let schools compete to secure, retain and reward the best teachers. Let schools say "sayonara" to those unable or unwilling to get the job done."
Past examples of merit pay for teachers have failed

Vivian Troen and Katherine C. Boles. "How ‘Merit Pay’ Squelches Teaching". Boston Globe. September 28, 2005: "Merit pay comes in many forms and flavors -- including extra bonuses for student achievement gains, satisfactory evaluations by principals or committees, acquiring additional duties, gaining new skills and knowledge, and serving in hard-to-staff schools. We've looked at dozens of plans in North America, South America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Guess what? None of them, past and present, has ever had a successful track record. None has ever produced its intended results. Any gains have been minimal, short-lived, and expensive to achieve."
Merit pay for teachers is tied to unreliable standardized tests

"Top Ten Reasons Why Merit Pay for Teachers Is a Terrible Idea". Education Portal. July 10, 2007: "1. Standardized Test Scores May Be Unreliable. Most merit pay programs are tied to the scores students receive on the tests required by Bush's No Child Left Behind Law. As the American Federation for Teachers and the National Education Association have pointed out, these standardized test scores are seldom reliable and do not provide an accurate barometer of a teacher's performance."
Merit pay works in markets, can work for teachers

Darcy Ann Olsen. "Teachers Deserve Merit Pay, Not Special Interest Pay". CATO. May 22, 2001: "Pay for performance is not a new concept. It works for businessmen, lawyers, waitresses, travel agents, journalists, athletes, accountants, in fact, for most of us. Why not teachers? If a school faces a teacher shortage, let wages increase to attract them. Let schools compete to secure, retain and reward the best teachers. Let schools say "sayonara" to those unable or unwilling to get the job done."
Merit pay focuses teachers on measures over their passion

"Top Ten Reasons Why Merit Pay for Teachers Is a Terrible Idea". Education Portal. July 10th, 2007: "7. The Definition of 'Merit' is Too Broad ... Every performance based pay program for teachers that is currently in effect works differently. Some programs allow teachers to up their pay for things that don't truly help students-like filling out paperwork-rather than things that can be less easily measured. It makes the idea of merit less meaningful for an individual who most likely became a teacher to help students."
Teachers should be paid on merit, not seniority and titles

"Link Teacher Pay, Student Gains." An Atlanta Journal-Constitution. October 14, 2005.: "As substitutes for performance-based standards, school systems now reward teachers on degrees and seniority. Yet neither of those measures may correlate with student achievement. In this competitive economy, companies would close their doors if they paid low-performing employees the highest salaries just because they’d been there a long time or had a grad school diploma on their wall."[5]
Merit pay is uncommon in business, unnecessary in schools

"The myth of private-sector performance pay". Economic Policy Institute. May 13, 2009: "Proponents of pay-for-performance for teachers argue that such compensation models are ubiquitous in the private sector. [...] However, a new EPI book shows that this conventional wisdom is inaccurate. [...] In Teachers, Performance Pay, and Accountability, economists Scott Adams and John Heywood [...] find that, contrary to the claims by advocates of teacher merit pay, 'relatively few private-sector workers have pay that varies in a direct, formulaic way with their productivity, and that the share of such workers is probably declining.'"
Merit pay undercuts valuable cooperation between teachers

"No merit to merit pay". United Teachers Los Angeles. November 9, 2007: "Teacher unions have historically resisted merit pay proposals because they undermine one of the core principles of teaching and learning: collaboration. Whether it is the informal discussion that takes place in the lunchroom or the more formal exchanges based on grade level, department, or small learning communities, these are only successful because as teachers we understand teaching is about working together to help our students, not competition for better pay."
Merit pay improves teaching and student learning

The Achievement Challenge Pilot Project (ACPP) is a five school merit pay program in Little Rock, Arkansas. Teachers could earn as much as an $11,000 bonus based on how much their students’ test scores improved. Researchers from the University of Arkansas reported on the program: "Students of teachers who are eligible for performance bonuses enjoy academic benefits. Further, many of the criticisms of merit pay programs simply have not proven true in Little Rock."[1]
Merit pay for teachers would be a bureaucratic nightmare

Beth Lewis. "Pros and Cons of Merit Pay For Teachers". About.com: "Virtually everyone agrees that designing and monitoring a Merit Pay program would be a bureaucratic nightmare of almost epic proportions. Many major questions would have to be adequately answered before educators could even consider implementing Merit Pay for teachers. Such deliberations would inevitably take away from our real goal which is to focus on the students and give them the best education possible."
Teachers unions oppose merit-based pay just to remain relevant

Thomas Hruz. "Quality Control: Merit Pay and Why the Teachers’ Unions Stand in the Way." Wisconsin Interest. Fall 2000: "The threat that teachers’ unions see from a performance-based pay system is clear: it would make them less relevant. The importance of teachers’ unions is reliant upon their superior ability to get for teachers better working conditions and compensation. If individual teachers, or groups of teachers within schools, are able to garner control over the effectuation of their own compensation levels, then the unions are faced with the potential of these teachers saying that the unions’ services are no longer needed, at least when it comes to bargaining for salaries."[6]
Teacher merit can be measured and help determine pay

Robert Holland. "Merit Pay for Teachers: Can Common Sense Come to Public Education?". Lexington Institute. October 2005: "[Opponents of merit based pay] have argued that teacher evaluation is too subjective for merit pay to be distributed fairly.... [the] 'subjectivity' excuse for stonewalling merit pay is no longer valid, no matter what small degree of validity it ever had. The Great Excuse has been rendered null and void by a revolutionary development in education: the rise of value-added assessment (VAA).... As pioneered by Dr. William Sanders at the University of Tennessee in the early 1990s, VAA enables education supervisors (and the teachers themselves) to look at objective evidence of how effectively the teachers are helping individual students improve their achievement test scores year to year. This statistical analysis can inform teachers who seek to improve. It can also provide a basis for handsomely rewarding those teachers who make a real difference with their students."
Merit pay divides teacher unions, undermines collective bargaining

"No merit to merit pay". United Teachers Los Angeles. November 9, 2007: "From a labor perspective merit pay would also divide the work force and in the long run lessen our ability to fight collectively to improve public education. If salaries were not simply based on years of experience and number of college credits earned or additional services provided, the teaching force at any workplace would be more stratified (differentiated) and much less willing to stand together during a conflict with school site management or during a contract struggle. The role of the union would be seriously compromised."
Teacher merit is too hard to measure for merit-pay to be fair

"Oppose Merit-Based Pay for Teachers". The Falcon's View. March 10, 2009: "the problem with merit-based pay is that there's no reasonable, rational, consistent way to measure performance... teaching is more art than science. Every student is different, with a unique perspective, background, learning style, and, more importantly, pace of development. To penalize a teacher for having a group of students who develop more slowly than others is absurd. No matter how good the teacher is, there's no way to force a child to develope faster than they're capable of doing."
NATO expansion strengthens European political integration

Strobe Talbott. "The Case for Expanding NATO". Time Magazine. 14 Jul. 1997 - "The alliance is determined that the enlargement strengthen Europe as a whole, to benefit nonmembers as well. In particular, the Madrid Summit will provide an impetus for bolstering the Partnership for Peace, which for the past three years has fostered joint exercises and closer coordination of defense planning among the allies and 27 neutral and former Warsaw Pact states."
NATO expansion helps deter Russian expansionism.

Russia still has a large influence on its neighbors. The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the protracted collapse of the Soviet Union into the Commonwealth of Independent States did remove the overwhelming threat of the USSR against Western Europe. However, the threat persists in a different form. The newly independent republics remain vulnerable to the vast political and military influence of Russia. The new threat is the destruction of stability of the new republics, and thus Russian expansion that is hostile to both the republics and the Western European states in their proximity. The solution is pre-emptive expansion in the other direction. The broadening of NATO to include the Eastern republics shall offer a bulwark against Russian expansion. NATO shall continue to perform the role of a defensive alliance against a putative military threat.
The costs of NATO expansion are prohibitive at a time when the Western European members are scaling back their defence budgets and the reducing the size of their conventional forces.

It is estimated that expense of ten years of protecting the borders of Eastern Europe are between $10 and $50 billion. Moreover, the bill for stationing forces permanently in the territory new Eastern European members would likely exceed $100 billion per decade. Given the fragile economies of the new republics, the existing NATO States will be obliged to absorb the expense of expansion. The proper question is whether the taxpayers of the US and Western European States wish to pay to protect citizens of distant republics from phantom threats.
Expanding NATO reduces potential of conflict between states

Former United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick explained, "There is . . . only one reliable guarantee against aggression. It is not found in international organizations. It is found in the spread of democracy. It derives from the simple fact that true democracies do not invade one another and do not engage in aggressive wars. . . . Preserving and strengthening democracies in Central and Eastern Europe should be the United States' central goal and top foreign policy priority in Europe, in my opinion. Membership in NATO will help to achieve those goals and strengthen the alliance."[1]
NATO is an outdated alliance against a long gone Soviet threat

Russia can no longer offer the conventional military threat of the Cold War. The acceptance of this reality by the US is evidenced by the fact that there are no longer 300,000 troops stationed in Germany. The indebted and demoralised Russian infantry is presently overstretched in the persistent conflicts in Chechnya and Tajikistan. The combination of the weakness of Russia’s conventional forces and the antagonism that would be created by the deployment of NATO troops on its borders in the new republics would be dangerously counter-productive. Russia would be obliged more than ever to depend on her nuclear arsenal. Therefore, expansion is not only unnecessary but it is also likely to increase the threat of nuclear conflict in Western Europe.
NATO already has close links with Israel

"However, four years later, today, the NATO secretary-general has visited Israel officially for the first time; NATO and Israel have signed an Individual Cooperation Program (ICP); Israeli and NATO members forces have trained together in joint exercises; and, even more important, Israel is actively participating in NATO's mission Active Endeavour, being carried out since 2001 in the Mediterranean waters." Rafael L Bardají for Strategic Studies Group. "The case for Israel's full NATO membership". 11 July 2008
Vast majority of Ukrainians don't want to join NATO

"Why Ukrainians stand up strongly against NATO". Pravda. 1 May 2008 - "On April 24 a Ukrainian social service announced sensational changes in Ukrainians’ preferences in foreign policy. The number of Ukrainians who backed up the country’s entry into NATO dropped ten percent within the past four months. This statement was issued by Ilko Kucheriv, the Democratic Initiatives Fund Director, who presented the results of research conducted by the Ukrainian Sociology Service by order of the fund within the period from March 17 to 31.
NATO is an alliance of democratic values, not just militaries

Daniel Fried, Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs. "NATO: Enlargement and Effectiveness". State Department, Testimony Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. 11 Mar. 2008 - "NATO is not just a military alliance; it is an alliance of values, and NATO’s success in the past and promise for the future reflect its fusion of strength and democratic values. I will speak today about how the Alliance is transforming itself to address global security challenges; its current missions and challenges, including ongoing operations in Afghanistan; and our goals for the Bucharest Summit and beyond."