Some tidbits from Gov. Martin O'Malley's appearance on WTOP radio today:

1) O'Malley, the new vice-chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, took a shot at some of his more prominent Republican counterparts. Only "fringe" governors, O'Malley said, were talking about rejecting elements of the Obama stimulus plan. He then named two of those governors he considered way out of the mainstream: Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.

2) Asked about his picks in the NCAA basketball championship tournament that features two Maryland teams, O'Malley made selections that make no sense. O'Malley said his picks for the Final Four were University of Maryland, Morgan State, Duke and North Carolina. But Morgan and North Carolina are both seeded in the South regional, meaning the governor's are way off, if parochial.

3) Speaking about proposed restrictions on death penalty cases that are emerging as a compromise to a full repeal that the governor backed, O'Malley said that Attorney General Doug Gansler's objections (as first reported in today's editions by The Washington Post) are not substantive. While Gansler told the Post that the evidence restrictions were "clumsy" and needed reworking, O'Malley said Gansler's views were "more a reflection on the fact he does not want the application of [the death] penalty narrowed" than on flaws with the Senate compromise legislation.