Article snippet: Ted Siff had made it to the final of the Bellaire Debate tournament in Texas, practically the Rose Bowl of the high-octane world of high school debate in the region, and victory was within his grasp. All he and his partner, his twin brother, Joe, had to do was beat a team they’d never heard of from Oklahoma City. They had prepared all through the summer of 1965, and as their opponents — a boy in a three-piece suit and a 16-year-old girl with straight brown bangs — slid into their desks, the Siffs felt confident. That changed when the girl opened her mouth. Everyone had to debate the same anodyne topic, but she laid out a case they had never even considered. When the Siffs tried to rebut it, her questions flew like bullets. “I remember this 16-year-old girl who was a firecracker questioner, rapid-fire questioner,” Siff said. “Those were new questions, those were new arguments. . . . We were stunned.” The Siffs lost. It was decades before they realized who had beaten them: Liz Herring, a young-for-her-grade high school senior who was about to blaze her way out of Oklahoma on a college debate scholarship and start a winding path to becoming US Senator Elizabeth Warren. Fifty years later, now a presidential candidate instead of a lanky teenager in a homemade wool jumper, Warren is hoping to deliver another command performance in Miami Wednesday night, when she will squeeze on stage with nine other candidates for the first Democratic debate. Warren has been rising in... Link to the full article to read more