Speeches

Google Inc. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt delivered Tuesday's closing keynote at the Newspaper Assn. of America annual conference in San Diego, conjuring up visions of an open, interactive future for the audience of newspeople. In order to move forward, he said, newspapers will have to get used to the idea that they are not just generators of trusted, professional content, but also aggregators of the new kinds of content the Web has enabled.

Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. told a mostly military audience Wednesday that some of those engaged in the battle against terrorism did not always follow the law. Holder did not mention torture or name the target of his criticism, leveled in a speech for a law conference at the U.S. Military Academy. But he praised military lawyers in the Judge Advocate General's Corps for their work representing terrorism detainees.

Vice President Joe Biden called on Israeli officials Tuesday to work harder for creation of a Palestinian state and to halt growth of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Biden, speaking at a conference sponsored by an influential pro-Israel lobby, said the Obama administration was committed to a new direction in Middle East peace efforts because "the status quo of the last decade has not served the interests of the United States, or Israel, very well."

President Obama will deliver his promised address to Muslims worldwide from Egypt, a nation the White House considers key to improving relations in the Middle East. Obama had said he would make the speech from a Muslim capital, but the country was not disclosed until Friday. "This is a continuing effort of the president to engage the Muslim world," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said. "The president has high hopes for a stronger relationship."

When University of Notre Dame valedictorian E. Brennan Bollman learned she'd be sharing a stage at Sunday's commencement with President Obama, she was elated. "I am a strong supporter of President Obama because I think he lives the values of justice and working toward peace," the 22-year-old senior said Tuesday. "President Obama takes a lot of pro-life positions. I don't think that he is strongly pro-abortion."

First Lady Michelle Obama on Saturday urged the first full graduating class at UC Merced to help solve society's problems with the same creativity and persistence they showed in wooing her to be their commencement speaker and in pioneering the 4-year-old campus in the San Joaquin Valley. "Why did I chose the University of California Merced to deliver my first commencement speech as first lady? Well, let me tell you something, the answer is simple. You inspired me.

It was an unusual showdown pitting present and former leaders, live on national television, with President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney dueling in back-to-back speeches Thursday over how to best protect the nation against terrorism. Obama pressed his case for closing the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and for discarding interrogation techniques he described as brutal, while Cheney warned that doing so would endanger the country.

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama left some fuzzy edges to his biography. He affirmed strong support for Israel but implied a strong empathy for Palestinians. His personal story played up his introduction to the black church, leaving his father's Islamic roots in the shadows. It was a narrative designed to ease any voter concern about Obama's background and counter false Internet rumors that he was a Muslim.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, already facing controversy for a 2001 speech on the virtue of having "a wise Latina" as a judge, made similar comments in a series of speeches released Thursday. She said the nation is "deeply confused" about the proper role of race and ethnic identity, and she maintained that her identity as a Latina shaped her life and her work in court. She hoped "a wise Latina" would reach a "better conclusion" than a white male, she said on several occasions.

A former member of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Cabinet who resigned in March has paid $5,400 in fines to a state watchdog agency for violating a ban on accepting speaking fees, while saying administration officials knew what she was doing and never advised her to stop. Rosario Marin, who led the State and Consumer Services Agency for three years, admitted to three violations of the state's ethics law under a settlement with the California Fair Political Practices Commission.