I can’t quite understand why Couric’s questions were not acceptable.
The people need to get to know Palin. As she pointed out last night, it has only been 5 weeks.
Why shouldn’t she be questioned about what she thinks, what she reads etc.
Although I do find her a bit “slippery”, she did fine in her debate but really who is she?
I still don’t know and I still can’t figure her out, I don’t really care what she thinks about Obama.

Let me ask you this, Sherry…what would you like to know about Palin (that is not available information from her history)? The information that you would like to know – do you already have that information about Biden?

MzEllen,
I think what I meant to write is that when you are a political figure and especially new on the national scene.
It makes sense to me that you might be asked specific questions (such as Gibson’s and Couric’s questions).
Perhaps Gov. Palin’s history is enough but it is confusing to me that anyone would think that the questions were somehow inappropriate.
I am not saying she could pull all the answers out of thin air, but she could have said “off the top of my head, I’m not sure or I don’t know.”
Thank you for challenging me to clarify my thoughts and to present them more clearly.

MzEllen: “The information that you would like to know – do you already have that information about Biden?”
I certainly do. He was my state senator. I used to drive by the intersection where his wife and daughter were killed. And I followed the early primary.

I don’t. So I am stuck with voting records.

Still, I’m interested in what Palin really thinks about court cases and international affairs, given that she doesn’t have much of a record on these and other issues a leader would expect to face on the national level. I know she’s come up with a list of court cases *after the debate*, but her off the cuff answers seem to be more informative, IMO, such as when she said she supported military action into Pakistan and allowing judges to alter the terms of mortgages to help reduce foreclosure rates.

“Palin said that the reason that she didn’t answer questions that Couric posed was because she was with Couric because she wasn’t asking questions that Palin thought the public wanted the VP candidate to answer. She’s right, Couric wasted our time and mislead many into thinking the woman was a lightweight. She isn’t and that came through last night.”
that’s the dumbest excuse. when couric asked palin what her favorite movie was, she jumped on the opportunity to answer! but when asked a question that actually pertains to the job she’s trying so desperately to get, she clams up because she thought that was a question that the public didn’t the VP candidate to answer???????? or where what sources she relies on for news?????? or her thoughts of supreme court decisions?????
WHAT???
omg. this is pointless. does anyone wonder anymore why palin isn’t qualified, or why the republican brand is toxic? jeeez. the governor is a lightweight, and i thank couric, gibson, and the concerned citizens of alaska for ferreting her out.

such as when she said she supported military action into Pakistan and allowing judges to alter the terms of mortgages to help reduce foreclosure rates.
Umm…Obama voted yes on the bill…and he (and Biden) also support military action into Pakistan.
And since McCain also voted yes on the bill…makes me want to opt out of voting.

It seems that Palin agreed with Obama and Biden, and not McCain, at least until a few hours after making those comments.
McCain’s camp had to correct Palin’s ‘misconception’ about their campaign’s position on cross-border operations into Pakistan (In my mind that seems an odd position that McCain backed into a few months ago and can’t seem to shake because of some ‘maverick’ fear of looking flip-floppy) and allowing judges to alter mortgage terms.
As for McCain voting ‘yes’ on the bill: I wonder when he’s going to actually suspend his campaign. Or is he going to go into nearly pure ‘negative mode’ from here on out?

Look, if Republicans were honest they would admit that Palin is just out of her league when it comes to handling unscripted situations where someone can answer a follow-up question (Couric and Gibson asked several: Iffil asked none) and she is virtually clueless when it comes to the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and history and political science, including international relations. To think of her sitting in the Oval Office as an adviser or as president during, say, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or, God forbid, the collapse of the American economy or a terrorist on the loose with a suitcase nuke, is a truly frightening prospect.
She learned her lines well. She knew what to say when she heard the word “energy” or “taxes” and she said her piece, even when she wasn’t answering the question. But she wasn’t conversational; she wasn’t thinking on her feet; she wasn’t even thinking at all in the strict sense of the word. She was responding to certain verbal cues. Some of her answers reminded me of the kind of rambling, incoherent, “verbage” (to use one of Palin’s own favorite locutions) that students write in their blue books when they come up against an unexpected essay question and have to fill up six pages. And she made a lot of serious mistakes, one of which her own campaign had to correct today.
What’s more troubling to me, though, is her phony, studied folksiness, those winks and “you betchas” and other canned lines. She reminded me so much of the character that Nicole Kidman plays in the movie “To Die For,” which, if you haven’t seen, is an absolutely terrific movie written by Buck Henry, who wrote “The Graduate.” Watch it and see if you don’t observe a similarity in their characters.
But worst of all was her total lack of any sign of empathy, spoken or unspoken, after Biden choked up when talking about the terrible accident that took the life of his wife and child and threatened the lives of his two sons, when Biden was 29 years old. Palin didn’t respond in any way at all, not even through a sympathetic glance or a thoughtful reflective silence. As soon as Biden finished, she immediately jumped right in and started talking about “mavericks” again.
No matter how keyed up you are, no matter how eager you are to show how well you know your lines, no matter how much you may want to succeed for the team, when you are sharing a stage with someone who’s just choked up talking about how he lost a child and/or sat through a terrible night wondering if were going to lose another, and you show no sign of any human response, that broadcasts something about you that is revealing, damning, and disturbing.
Equally revealing, damning and disturbing is her refusal, along with her husband, to respond to subpoenas that a judge of her own state has ruled constitutional. This is a very serious matter. How can anyone say they will support, uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the land when they won’t answer a subpoena themselves? No one in the history of the U.S. has ever run for national office while refusing to answer a subpoena. It’s outrageous behavior; it’s spitting in the eye of the legal system in a way that would undoubtedly put any one of us behind bars if we did it.

So Palin does an interview today with Fox (no surprise there) and takes the opportunity to smear Obama with a year-old discredited attack.
“During an appearance on Fox News this Friday, Sarah Palin claimed that Barack Obama should be disqualified from serving as president because he had once proclaimed that troops in Afghanistan were `air raiding villages and killing civilians.’
“If the charge seemed oddly and painfully familiar it’s because it has been levied at Obama – and subsequently dismissed – several times before during this election season.
“The issue stems from a remark the Illinois Democrat made in August 2007, in Nashua, New Hampshire. Speaking to supporters, the Senator called for an increase of U.S. troops in that war zone because, without the influx, operations were being limited to air raids that resulted in many preventable civilian deaths.
“`Now you have narco drug lords who are helping to finance the Taliban,’ Obama said, `so we’ve got to get the job done there [in Afghanistan], and that requires us to have enough troops that we are not just air raiding villages, and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.’
“When the comment was first made, Republicans were eager to mold it into an electoral liability. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and the RNC called it disrespectful and unbecoming of a presidential aspirant.
“But within a day, objective observers were knifing through the faux-outrage. The AP fact-checked the claim by pointing out that none other than President Bush himself had bemoaned the excessive loss of innocent Afghani lives and the setback such casualties caused for U.S. military efforts there.
“And yet, the GOP couldn’t and wouldn’t let the canard die. One year after Obama’s initial remark, the McCain campaign marked the anniversary by randomly raising it in the form of a biting press release. That charge didn’t create many waves. (The Huffington Post wrote an article examining that attack as well.) But the McCain campaign kept at it.
“On Thursday night, Palin brought it up directly in the vice presidential debate, and actually intensified the smear. Rather than painting the remark as a gaffe borne of inexperience, as Republicans claimed last year, Palin implied that Obama was slandering U.S. forces as little more than murderers.”
To watch a fact-check video made by Talking Points Memo last year when Obama made the remarks in question go here and scroll down:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/03/say-it-aint-so-sarah-pali_n_131841.html

If there’s something that sounds vaguely familiar about Palin’s “outsider” and “reform” and “reaching across the aisle” and “new look” and “my record as governor” rhetoric, here’s why.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27015517#27015517
It’s worth sitting through the 15 sec. UPS ad.

IT IS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO LIKE THE MEDIA TO PROSICUTE A WASHINGTON OUTSIDER. GOVERNER SARAH PALIN IS A WASHINGTON OUTSIDER JUST LIKE OUR PRESIDETN GEORGE W. BUSH.

The American public wants to know who Sarah Palin is. If Sarah Palin is not able to or unwilling to answer questions then she needs to get out of the race. Everything is news worthy and important. I noticed that she evaded certain questions in the debate and that bothered me.
As as everybody knows, when you are a celebrity, nothing is off bounds. Get use to it, Sarah (and Michele), it comes with the territory. As Harry Truman said, “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

Sorry, Michele, can’t buy this one. Say you froze, or were trying to avoid a misstatement, but this tack is too cute by half.
Seems like a handler answer to me.

Couric is a seasoned LEFTY LIB interviewer. She knows exactly the difference between questions that provide a frame of reference and produce genuine discovery and those posed as tests of memory to cast a person in a bad light.
The truth is, with Palin and the Axis Media, she is learning, but learn she is doing. Couric did “get her” with a memory question. And Palin’s development, with the disingenuous motives of the Axis Media, is green and it showed…but that is all it showed. The general public is quite aware of such deceitful tactics by LEFTY LIB AXIS MEDIA people.
An honest interviewer would have listed 4 or 5 landmark rulings and then sought her opinion, not instantly demand she provide proof she can pass a memory quiz. But Couric’s questioning wasn’t honest, she wasn’t really seeking discovery, she was employing a TACTIC as a SURROGATE for The Obamanation and the LEFTY LIB MARXIST party.
However, all of that is gone. As Palin has demonstrated, she took the driver’s seat and has written a new set of rules. The learning curve is fast and sharp and she is making the turns as is needed. The next interview she engages in with an AXIS MEDIA member will have the same dishonest attempts as Couric but what will have changed is the aggressiveness and response technique of Palin.

All you liberals…if it were Republicans noting those things…but you know…since Palin came on the scene, some of the attacks were such mean-spirited lies, innuendos and baseless that you’ve pretty much given up any credibility.
Speaking of “history”, exactly when did we kick Hezbollah out of Lebanon?
I suppose we could cut Sarah a little slack when she said that the Constitution “would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate”…since what the Constitution says in Article 1 (outlining the role of the Legislative Branch is
“Clause 4:
The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.
Clause 5:
The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.”
It seems that Palin is right…the VP IS the President of the Senate…whether or not there is a tie. That VP would have not vote, but would be responsible for residing over the Senate.
Except for stepping into the shoes of the President, Article 2 (which gives job responsibilities for the Executive Branch) does not addresses the job of Vice President.
Palin was more correct that Biden when it comes to the Constitutional job description of Vice Prsident.
Here is what they said:
Biden:
And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there’s a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.
Wrong. The VP IS the President of the Senate, whether or not there is a tie vote.
Palin:
No, no. Of course, we know what a vice president does. And that’s not only to preside over the Senate and will take that position very seriously also. I’m thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president’s policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are
Right. If you would like an accurate representation of what the duties of the Vice President are (in terms of the founding fathers, NOT what came out of Biden’s mouth), explore the history of Thomas Jefferson (founding father) and what his role as VP was.

By the way…did you know that the Vice President’s salary is the same as the Chief Justice and the Speaker of the House – and based on their duties as President of the Senate?
Or that the VP’s pension is not based on their term as President of the Senate…and (members of the Senate are fully vested in their pension after 5 years) that the VP must serve as President of the Senate for a minimum of 5 years before receiving a pension?
I’m thinking that Biden was “not-quite-correct” in his definition of what the Constitution says the VP does.

That means they ‘preside’ over the Senate.
Do you know what that actually means they do? It doesn’t mean quite the same thing as the President of the US means.
It is more a parliamentary term. (Not in the sense of being a parliament, but in the sense of ‘parliamentary procedure’). They handle the gavel. They make sure that parliamentary procedure is followed (when present). They can ‘recognize’ specific members to give them the ability to address the body of the Senate, etc. Strictly procedural matters.
There is, indeed, a strong convention within the Senate that the VP does NOT use their position in a partisan manner, and attempt to influence votes, except in their role as a tie breaker.
The only official duties in the Senate that the Constitution specifically states the VP performs is.. to cast the deciding vote in case of a tie, and to certify the official vote count of the Electoral College.
The question is, what was meant by exerting more authority when WORKING in the Senate.
No, there is NOTHING in their role of ‘presiding’ over the Senate that allows for the exertion of any additional authority.
Presiding over the Senate is NOT like being the President of the US.
It doesn’t mean they are the ‘chief executive’ of the Senate.
Now, Biden was in error in saying that was the only time they CAN preside. But not in the fact that this is the only time that most VP’s bother to preside.
Frankly, they have members who insure the following of parliamentary procedure, and most VP’s figure they have better things to do than sit around and say, ‘The chair recognizes the Senator of such and so’.

The question is, what was meant by exerting more authority when WORKING in the Senate.
That is the question, isn’t it?
Again, I suggest exploring history, and the role that Thomas Jefferson took as Vice President and President of the Senate.

i’m curious, mzellen. exactly which branch of government do you think that the vice president belongs to?
how much the v.p. gets paid has no bearing on the limited powers of the v.p. has over the senate.
my concern is not that palin may preside over the senate (though any v.p.s rarely do, except to cast a vote to break any tie, or for ceremonial events), but that she seemed to me to indicate a desire to follow in cheney’s footsteps by pretending to be part of both the executive branch and the legislative branch, ignoring the rules of each that he chose to by claiming they didn’t apply to him because he was in the other branch.

It appears that the VP is mentioned in both the administrative and legislative branches in the Constitution…and with not much to do in either.
Historically, the VP has had as large (or as small) of a role as the president wishes them to have.
If Palin attempts to cover both branches, but stays within the description of the Constitution in both, that should not be an issue. It is when folks go beyond the Constitution that there is a problem.
If (as part of the legislative branch) she presides over the Senate and encourages her party’s senators in view of the president’s policies, that does not go beyond the Constitution.
If she also covers what has historically been the VP’s job – state funerals, sitting in on cabinet meetings, offering advice – and preparing to step in if needed…if that does violate the Consitution, why is that not okay?

you didn’t answer the question, so i’ll give it a go.
it is not okay if she thinks the role belongs to the “cheney branch” of government.
yes, the vice president has constitutional duties with regard to the senate, but is not part of the legislative branch. consider how the constitution is worded, first and foremost the title is “vice president:” it’s “the vice president presides over the senate,” not “the president of the senate is first person in line of succession to the presidency.” also consider under the original rules of the constitution how a person became vice president. candidates would all run for the presidency; men would vote for their favorite 2 choices; when the votes were tallied, the candidate with the most votes would be president and the one with the second most would become vice president. notice that none were running to be “president of the senate.”
by the way, when you say “if that does violate the Consitution, why is that not okay,” i do think you mean “if that does not violate the constitution…” correct? because the former would clearly not be okay for obvious reasons.