Speech

In your editorial on the responses to the attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya, you say that the Obama administration's message should have focused on our belief in free speech for everyone ("Romney has a point," Sept. 13). I agree that it would be fine to say that one on one or at a meeting when everyone was calm. In the situation as it was, they just wanted to calm the atmosphere and calm down the people. If you were there, would you have said, "You have right to free speech, and here we are right over this wall.

It's been a tough week for Maryland politicians who misspeak badly and then have to correct themselves. First, there was Gov. Martin O'Malley and his lame excuses for his "no" to the "are you better off than four years ago" question while defending President Barack Obama on national television, and then Rep. Roscoe Bartlett invoked the Holocaust in explaining the federal student loan program's allegedly unconstitutionality, a truly outrageous comparison...

In President Barack Obama's much-anticipated acceptance speech in Charlotte, he sounded at times to be relying on the reverse of the old breakup line: "It's not you, it's me. " He told the American public that it is "you," and not he as president, who must hold firm behind his recovery efforts if the country is to bounce back economically over the next four years. Rather than taking advantage of Mitt Romney's failure in Tampa to provide specific details on what he would do to turn the economy around, Mr. Obama likewise fell short on any new approaches to break the stalemate.

Perhaps it was the expectations raised by his far more eloquent appearances at earlier conventions, or maybe it was the modest ambitions he embraced, or that he labored in the shadow of Bill Clinton's rousing defense of his administration, but even the most hard-core Democrat would have to concede that President Barack Obama's acceptance speech to his party's national convention was neither especially memorable nor ambitious. If the message of the Republican National Convention can be distilled to, as Mr. Clinton memorably described it, "we left him a total mess, he hasn't cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in," then perhaps the Democratic National Convention might be boiled down to "we're doing the best we can with this mess so be patient, and, oh, by the way, that other guy would be a lot worse.

[Following is a transcript of Cal Ripken Jr.'s speech at his sculpture unveiling ceremony Thursday at Camden Yards. ] Thank you, thank you. Just for the record, just because you stood up and clapped, I'm not taking a lap around the ball park again. Those days are over, thank you. In the beginning, I wasn't sure what to expect from these bronze statue ceremonies. Sure these statues are for pretty good Oriolesbaseball players, but at the same time a familiar kind of Orioles magic started to appear, the magic of the Oriole Way. A deep-rooted connection developed over generations, made up of people who dedicated their lives to baseball in Baltimore.

As Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley took the stage at the Democratic National Convention last night, pundits in the audience dug out their smart phones and provided insta-analysis on Twitter. The feedback was not entirely positive. Some of the criticism undoubtedly stems from high expectations and reinforces the important role that O'Malley is playing in national politics. When he is talking, opinion-makers are paying attention.  In this case, perhaps he wished they were not. Josh Greenman , a New York Daily News opinion editor, tweeted that the Democrats had "solid night" but added "with the exception of O'Malley.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, one of the most prominent Democrats in the country, was a given a dream slot Tuesday night at the party's national convention, speaking from 9:55 to 10:05 p.m. when prime-time viewing was likely to be near its peak. I cannot tell you how his speech played in the convention hall in Charlotte; you'll have to read the accounts of the Sun reporters on the scene for that. But I will tell you this: It was not a very good TV speech, and I suspect it played poorly in many living rooms around the country.

Gov. Martin O'Malley did his job Tuesday night in Charlotte. He fired up the party faithful with a call and response: "Forward, Not Back. " He hit the Republican nominee hard on his Swiss bank accounts - reinforcing a campaign message that Mitt Romney isn't like the rest of middle class America. And he gave an enthusiastic, high-volume endorsement of President Barack Obama - along with a little Maryland history thrown in for good measure. Governor O'Malley got the crowd revved up to reach even greater heights during the speeches by San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro and First Lady Michelle Obama.

What media outlets and blogs are saying about Gov. Martin O'Malley's speech to the Democratic National Convention. The Baltimore Sun : It was not a very good TV speech, and I suspect it played poorly in many living rooms around the country. The Daily Beast 's Andrew Sullivan: O'Malley improved as he went along. Daily Kos : My boy O'Malley did not have a great night. Can we admit that? ... While positive and on message, O'Malley seemed transparent in his desire to make the speech primarily an introduction for himself to the country.

Barack Obama has given some great speeches since his national debut as the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. Don't expect his speech Thursday night in Charlotte to be one of them. This is not a moment to announce his arrival on the national political scene. Nor will this speech be anything like the Philadelphia speech of May 2008, where he explained how racial identity shaped his life and the fate of the nation. Because asking to be returned to the Oval Office for a second term is a task quite different from asking for the first four years, Thursday's speech may not even look much like Mr. Obama's acceptance speech four years ago at Denver's Invesco Field.