Speeches

washington -- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa. "I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

WASHINGTON - Targeting an issue popular with women, a key voter group, Mitt Romney assailed President Obama's leadership on education Wednesday and blamed teachers unions for problems facing American schools. The Republican presidential candidate is making education the focus of his brief campaign schedule this week. On Thursday, he will tour a charter school in Philadelphia and lead a discussion on education in the most heavily Democratic part of the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

For Coach Pat Riley, there's a lot more riding on a third consecutive Los Angeles Lakers National Basketball Assn. championship than another ring on his finger. A series win over the Pistons could also mean hundreds of thousands of promotional dollars in his pocket. Much of it comes from motivational speeches he gives to corporations such as Exxon--which earn him up to $15,000 each. And while Riley is currently a pitchman for six products--from Southern California Chrysler-Plymouth Dealers to Transamerica--marketing experts say he has yet to really cut the mustard as a big-time, national TV spokesman.

The Catholic League, the media-savvy conservative group that combats anti-Catholicism real and imagined, recently took after the Los Angeles Times for an editorial supporting Georgetown University’s speaking invitation to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

First Lady Barbara Bush offered a strong defense of private lives, including her own, saying Wednesday that she sympathizes with Wellesley College students who raised questions about her speaking at their graduation, but she thinks they don't understand "where I am coming from." "That's all right," Mrs. Bush said. "I chose to live the life I've lived, and I think it has been a fabulously exciting, interesting, involved life. I hope some of them will choose the same. . . .

For some it may have been Super Bowl Sunday, but for others in African squalor, World Leprosy Day counted more. For Pope John Paul II, Sunday proved a day as physically and emotionally challenging as any 69-year-old man-with-a-mission could pray for. The indefatigable Pope labored for 15 hours in 10 events Sunday on the fourth day of his journey through some of the world's poorest countries on the southern fringes of the Sahara Desert.

Large swaths of Iraq remain outside the control of the interim government, major highways are fraught with attackers, and interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi -- along with the U.S. Embassy and much of the international community -- must conduct business in fortified compounds guarded by tanks, blast walls and barbed wire. In Washington, Allawi gave Congress an upbeat assessment Thursday, but the situation in Iraq is more complicated.

Hollywood actor alumnus out. Rock musician alumnus in. UCLA announced Monday that Brad Delson, lead guitarist for the popular rock-rap band Linkin Park, will step in to replace movie star James Franco as commencement speaker at Friday's graduation ceremony for the College of Letters and Science.

"I'd like to thank …" Those four words should appear in 99.9% of all speeches given on Oscar night. But not every speech has to be a rote list of individual names following that opening. As many winners have proved over the years, the Oscar acceptance can be a genuine outpouring of joy, full of off-the-cuff personal moments, or a chance to get on a soapbox. Who can forget the indelible moments - for better or worse - created by Sally Field, Cuba Gooding Jr., Marlon Brando surrogate Sacheen Littlefeather or one-arm pushup king Jack Palance as they accepted their trophies?

I wonder if anyone besides myself finds it disgusting and deplorable that Presidents and presidential candidates have their speeches written by other people? If a candidate for the highest office in the land isn't capable of writing his own speech, why on earth are we putting him (or her) in office? Are they expressing their views, their thoughts, their decisions, their ideas, or Peggy Noonan's or Kenneth Khachigian's? No one wrote Lincoln's speeches and he managed. Let's see if any of these ghostwriters can top the Gettysburg Address.

Prodded by an ultraconservative Catholic group, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., has criticized Friday's scheduled speech at Georgetown University by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. Although Sebelius favors abortion rights, the "sin" that incurred the archdiocese's displeasure was the Obama administration's proposed rule requiring insurance coverage for contraception for employees of religious hospitals and educational institutions. Because Sebelius' actions "present the most direct challenge to religious liberty in recent history," the archdiocese suggested, students at the Jesuit-affiliated university shouldn't be able to hear her speak at an awards ceremony for its Public Policy Institute.

AGA, Egypt - After an unfriendly journalist was tossed off, Amr Moussa's campaign bus headed north to the Nile Delta, where barefoot boys and peasants greeted him with horns, drums and two dancing horses. Moussa arrived as both novelty and sensation, a front-runner in Egypt's first freely contested presidential election. The former diplomat who once negotiated with world leaders walked roads strewn with hay and spotted with manure, giving speeches on dignity and chatting with elders near herds of sheep and sheds full of broken farm equipment.

President Obama officially launched his re-election campaign with public rallies in Columbus, Ohio, and Richmond, Virginia, on Saturday.With that launch came a re-tooled stump speech which both defended his record in office and laid out the contrast with Republican nominee Mitt Romney. The speeches in both cities were largely the same. Here's a full transcript of his remarks in Columbus, following the acknowledgement of local leaders. OBAMA: "I want to thank so many of our Neighborhood Team Leaders for being here today.  You guys will be the backbone of this campaign.  And I want the rest of you to join a team or become a leader yourself, because we are going to win this thing the old-fashioned way -- door by door, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Putting a symbolic seal on a long and brutal conflict, President Obama made a dramatic overnight visit to the Afghan capital, signing an accord meant to offer assurances that the United States is not abandoning Afghanistan but also acknowledging that the massive Western military presence is coming to a close. After landing on a darkened runway late Tuesday night, Obama rushed to the heavily fortified presidential palace of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to sign a strategic partnership accord that sets the broad outlines of U.S. engagement for a decade beyond the completion of NATO's combat role in 2014.

"The King's Speech"will end its West End reign early. The play, which was slated to run at Wyndham's Theatre through July 21, will wrap May 12. The play has suffered poor ticket sales, and producers claim that the staged version came too close to the 2011 Oscar-winning film of the same name, starring Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. Producers said in a statement that, "Two years ago, originating producer Michael Alden was ready to put the play on and the film came along and blocked its path.

SACRAMENTO - Alarmed that political groups are secretly funding bloggers to promote or attack candidates, the state's ethics czar proposed Thursday that Web-based pundits disclose such payments. Voters are increasingly relying on bloggers and websites for information on political issues and have a right to know if an interested party is paying to plant messages, said Ann Ravel, who heads California's political watchdog agency. "In order for people to really know whether they can have faith and trust in the independence of recommendations they are receiving, they have to be aware" of any payments, she said.

The cable TV channels fired their screeching engines hours in advance. A "Health Care Make or Break Moment" screamed a CNN headline. Countdown clocks at Fox and MSNBC ticked inexorably toward 00:00, the moment when President Obama would face down a joint session of Congress. This had to be really, really big, I learned all day Wednesday from the excitable people on cable TV -- a speech that likely would determine the fate of healthcare reform and, perhaps, the Obama presidency.

Though it inspired controversy over the last week, President Obama's back-to-school address to America's students Tuesday ended up being decidedly motivational rather than political -- and even won praise from some Republicans. Speaking to students in a nationwide broadcast from a suburban Virginia high school, the Democratic president urged children to rise above their mistakes and challenges to succeed in school, offering himself as an example of "a goof-off" who went on to make good.

Faced with a congressional stalemate over transportation funding, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wants county voters to approve an indefinite extension of a half-cent sales tax used for transit projects. A proposed November ballot measure will be a centerpiece of Villaraigosa's State of the City address Wednesday evening at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, according to the mayor's office. It marks the latest effort by the mayor, who is trying to cement a legacy as a transportation visionary during his final year in office, to borrow against future tax revenues and rapidly expand L.A. County's transit system.

Joe Biden, who's been the Obama campaign's lead attack dog for weeks now, sharpened his rhetoric Thursday to label Mitt Romney as out of touch, and accuse him of supporting a tax structure that was "out of step with American values. " The vice president went to Exeter, N.H., where Romney had delivered a major speech on the economy before the state's leadoff primary, to continue the administration's push for a so-called Buffett rule to ensure the wealthiest Americans were paying at least as much in taxes as the middle class.