BOSTON -- Maryland delegates tucking into scrambled eggs and French toast set down their forks to clap and cheer the fiery rhetoric of NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, a Baltimore native, as he condemned "gay bashing and union bashing and immigrant bashing" that he said "at the end of the day deplete us."

Mfume's 12-minute speech to a daily breakfast meeting of the Maryland delegation to the Democratic National Convention was loudly approved. He decried "drugs (that) are more available than textbooks," and called Supreme Court justices "narrow-minded ideologues." Mfume drew a loud collective laugh from the audience, which included Sen. Paul Sarbanes and Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, when he directed them to take the hands of their neighbors and repeat a chant. "Hello neighbor/ Hello friend/ God has brought us/Through thick and thin," Mfume said, and ending "But I can't help it/If I look better than you."

But, only scattered laughter met Mayor O'Malley's reference to the deputy secretary of Defense as the "comb-sucker, Wolfowitz," in an apparent reference to a scene in the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" in which Wolfowitz licks his comb and runs it through his hair before a press conference.

Mfume will speak to the full convention Thursday.

-- Kathleen Cullinan.<

BOSTON -- Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley has been working hard on his featured Wednesday night speech to delegates at the Democratic National Convention. "We went through five drafts before it got sent to the (Democratic National Committee), and then they sent it back," O'Malley said. "Some of their changes I like."

He said he also has received advice from the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

O'Malley said his speech will focus on security in big cities and small towns.

"For the last three years, cities, ports and borders have remained needlessly vulnerable," he said in an interview Tuesday at a Maryland reception at the Bell in Hand tavern hosted by Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan.

The mayor said he would speak for seven minutes, or 1,000 words.

"Whichever comes first," he said. "After that they lower you into a pit."

-- Ryan Spass

BOSTON - Maybe this Democratic Party is becoming more united.

Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan hosted a happy hour for Maryland delegates to the Democratic National Convention at a comfortable Boston watering hole, Bell in Hand.

Delegates were greeted with a firm Duncan handshake and two wooden nickels good for two free drinks.

And just as delegates began wandering back to the Fleet Center, where the convention was underway, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley walked in. Duncan and O'Malley are likely to face each other for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2006.

-- Katrina Altersitz

BOSTON -- Even U.S. senators have technical difficulties.

That was the case Tuesday morning, when Sen. Barbara Mikulski appeared before the Democratic National Committee Women's Caucus and her microphone went dead as she started her speech. So while the thunderous sound of hundreds of tambourines and cheering Democrats didn't help, they didn't hurt, either.

Instead, when Maryland's diminutive junior senator's microphone finally came on she came out swinging, and the crowd went wild.

"Do they hear us now? ... We're here to stay," said Mikulski.

For Annapolis native Zina Pierre, a member of the Women's Voting Committee who introduced Mikulski before the microphone went on the fritz, the event was a learning experience in civic duty.

"When folk don't vote and don't register to vote, that's a sin," said Pierre, also a youth minister. "It's saying that they're giving up their vote."

-- Elysa Batista.<

BOSTON - Rep. Al Wynn said Tuesday that increasing the number of minority-owned small businesses is the only way for the African-American community to improve its position in the economy.

"Martin Luther King understood it was not just about civil rights," he told the Congressional Black Caucus town hall meeting. "It was about economic rights."

"If we can put more money into jobs and into the community, then ultimately we will have more economic power," he said.

The Mitchellville Democrat, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus Minority Business Task Force, said helping small and minority businesses have been two of his major priorities since first being elected in 1992.

"Minority businesses mean more jobs," he told the mostly black audience at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center at Roxbury Community College. "We can't keep demanding, or begging, or appealing to others to make jobs in our community if we don't do it ourselves, too."

Wynn also went into detail about the types of jobs he thinks communities need. He said while some new jobs are being created, many require advanced degrees, are more likely to come from only larger businesses and are not being created in the African-American community.

"Everyone talks about high-tech, but what about low-tech?" he asked.

-- By Joseph Bacchus - 30 - CNS-7-27-04

Copyright © University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism