Do policy issues such as "how to deal with China" get discussed in the TGIFs or e-mail lists? I would imagine that such discussions might become very long-winded and very prone to flame wars very quickly.
As far as email lists go, the discussions can get quite lively, although I wouldn't generally call them flame wars - civility still holds in general. But they can definitely get long; the term centithread gets thrown around a lot. When I was there one of the longest I saw was about people putting open chocolate milk back in the fridge, and whether or not that was a terrible thing to do :p..