10 common sense questions that should be asked during tonight's presidential debate

Each time the debates come up, be they presidential or vice presidential, it seems like they lack more pointed questions and most certainly pointed answers. Is it because they are afraid of tying themselves to a promise they can't deliver? Because saying something you can't twist later on is just against the code of politicians? More likely the latter. It's easy to notice.

A second problem arises, though, and that's the spin that is put on some of both the questions and answers given. The following are ten questions that, given direct answers, would shed great amounts of light on the person behind the answer.

1. Why are you so willing to tie our “dependence on foreign oil” to terrorism? Agreed, some of the oil sold to us by outside countries may help fund terrorism, however, it's pretty well known that most of our foreign oil comes from South America. In fact, why are we still tying Iraq to terrorism?

2 Most people who are voting probably have access to the internet at some point. The health care issue is always discussed in the most vague manner possible and most often from a tax standpoint. What exactly is your plan for healthcare? Why isn't it posted online somewhere? No. Blogs don't count.

3. We never should have been in Iraq to begin with. Their government is not much closer now to solidarity than they were 4 years ago. It takes police and military members in this country 2-3 months to train, with maybe a 6 month schooling afterwards. At this rate, we could have trained about 8 million Iraqis by now. Why are we still there?

4. President Bush has in many ways, by both legal and moral standards, rewritten a large part of our constitution. Would you change it back? A good example of this is wire tapping. Yes, the President did come up with a judiciary committee to oversee his actions, but there should be no need for a special committee made up of his friends or people he owes. We already have judges for this.

5. What is it about Israel? Why is it even an issue and why do we spend so much money on protecting them?

6. Why do we focus so much on drilling offshore when the focus should be on geothermal, wind, solar and other natural and renewable/sustainable energy sources? Drilling offshore will take a decade to produce a drop of oil. In that same decade, numerous people have laid out plans that you can find here: http://www.wecansolveit.org/content/pages/287/, which will help us be independent as well as getting us weened off of oil and oil products.

7. This is an age old question that has been beat to death, but it needs to be asked: Why are both marijuana and hemp still illegal? Obviously the laws are completely outdated concerning these things and in fact hinder the production of something that could help our farmers out a great deal. What's the hold up?

8. Given the recent economic issues, in conjunction with 95 years of a bad banking platform, isn't it time we started backing our money up with something of value so we actually know how much we have? Printing it out of thin air just seems like a bad idea. And shouldn't the government be printing it themselves?

9. Why can't gay people just get married? Really. What's the big deal? We allow religious zealots to get away with tax evasion, hate crimes and tons of other things because they subscribe to some fairytale. Why can't two people who happen to be in love and the same sex be as miserable as straight people?

10. If you were elected president, would you then be able to answer questions in a pointed, open and honest answer? You couldn't possibly sound any worse than the guy who's running things now.