I noticed when she stepped up to the podium & Biden got the first question, Palin furiously wrote notes for the first 2 or 3 minutes. Reminded me of when I used to take math tests and dump all the equations I could remember on a scrap piece of paper to refer to later. Needless to say, I am not a mathematician now and Gov. Palin should not be VP.

Every politician, including Obama, has speech writers, and often read from a teleprompter. What's the big deal that Governor Palin does the exact same things? If all your petty criticisms could all be rolled together, it wouldn't amount to anything except a dislike of her stealing Obamas spotlight. The world is abuzz about a relatively unknown woman on the McCain ticket. Sort of like another unknown that popped up out of nowhere to run for the Presidency. Sarah Palin has really jerked a knot in the thongs of liberal Demoncraps everywhere. I would rather have a green V.P. in office than a trainee President like Obama.

I watched the debate on C-SPAN where they used the split screen. It appeared as though they provided both candidates with a notepad to write ideas on. Both of them could be seen writing while the other talked, and at one point, while hockey mom was babbling on about something she'd learned only the night before, Biden wrote furiously, lifted the pad into camera view, flipped the page over and continued to write. When she shut up, he blew her away with responses to her erroneous answer.

It is common in most debating and public speaking situations to provide people with a note pad. Having said this, I do not know if the rules for this particular debate included the use of prepared notes perhaps left on the podium prior to the start.