Your daily dose of news, notes and links from around Kansas University.

• Never underestimate the power of a highway sign.

Perhaps that’s the lesson taken from the nice national exposure given to the KU debate team during Monday’s ESPN broadcast of the KU-Oklahoma State basketball game.

Debate Coach Scott Harris told me the whole thing was ESPN sideline reporter Holly Rowe’s idea.

ESPN had used the highway sign that makes mention of KU’s five national debate championships in a pregame video for the previous Monday’s KU-K-State game.

For that game, the segment discussed how Kansas State people write “EMAW” on KU signs near Manhattan. (For anyone not up to date on KSU lingo, EMAW stands for “every man a Wildcat.” Catchy.)

But Harris told me that Rowe saw the line on the sign about KU being a five-time national champion in debate, got an OK from her producer, and organized the segment.

It featured the sign, a little miniature debate between two KU debaters about which team should be ranked No. 1 (one picked up KU’s case and the other took Ohio State). Harris got shown on television — “fortuitous luck,” he said, given that he happened to have a ticket for the game. And announcer Brent Musburger compared Harris to basketball coach Bob Knight, who was also on the broadcast team.

So, all in all, it was a pretty nice spot for the debate folks. And it was all because of a highway sign.

I bet there’s a video clip of the debate segment out there somewhere, though I couldn’t track it down. If someone sends it to me, I’ll update this post with it.

• KU law professor Stephen McAllister spent some time recently arguing before the Supreme Court, according to the Washington Post.

McAllister, who serves as Kansas’ solicitor general, is arguing for the government in Bond v. U.S., an interesting case involving terrorism laws.

What makes the case interesting is that the accused biological terrorist isn’t who you might think. It’s Carol Anne Bond, a trained microbiologist who poisoned her husband’s lover. The U.S. attorney’s office prosecuted her under anti-terrorism laws designed to enforce an international treaty with a long name: “Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction.”

The legal issues are pretty interesting, too, and you can read more about them in the article.

McAllister became involved after he was assigned to defend the appeals court decision by justices of the Supreme Court, the newspaper reported.

• Ed Phillips, KU Medical Center’s vice chancellor for administration, has announced his intention to retire in June.

He joined KUMC in 1999 following a 31-year career in the U.S. Navy, where he achieved the rank of rear admiral.

The position oversees many critical non-academic functions at KUMC, including the offices that oversee the budget, information resources, safety, buildings (KUMC has 40 of them) and compliance with state, local and federal laws.

A search is underway to find a new vice chancellor.

• Maybe I should find a way to seek out tips for Heard on the Hill on a highway sign. “Waffle House, 1 mile east; send tips for Heard on the Hill to ahyland@ljworld.com.” OK, maybe not….