He Speaks  —  Video highlight: Perry says he has decided he wants to be president.  —  Video highlight: Perry on 43's advice to him. Transcript of Mark Halperin's Interview with Rick Perry  —  Halperin: Tell me what being a Texan means to you.  —  Perry: (Laughs.)

Taxes key to Mitt Romney's '04 pitch to Standard & Poor's  —  Gov. Mitt Romney lobbied the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's in 2004 to raise his state's credit rating in part because Massachusetts had raised taxes during an economic downturn two years earlier.

Cameron's Broken Windows  —  OUR son lives next to a Turkish mosque on Kingsland Road in Hackney, where some of London's worst mob violence has occurred.  When looters rampaged through Hackney last weekend, there were few police officers to stop them and residents had to chase them off with butcher knives, truncheons and baseball bats.

Peter King on Osama bin Laden movie: ‘I hit a sensitive nerve’  —  Rep. Peter King begs to differ with White House press secretary Jay Carney's jab that it's “ridiculous” for the congressman to suggest the Obama administration could be endangering national security by cooperating with filmmakers working on a movie about Osama bin Laden.

More Educated People Spend More On Booze  —  Your Bureau of Labor Statistics trivia fact of the day is that educational attainment is strongly correlated with alcohol expenditures:

Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters  —  A few weeks after the U.S. city of Detroit was ravaged by 1967 race riots in which 43 people died, I was shown around the wrecked areas by a black reporter named Joe Strickland.

Claire McCaskill Comes Out Against Further Unemployment Benefits [UPDATE] … During a Tuesday visit to a factory in St. Charles, Mo., Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill said she opposed extending federal unemployment benefits.  —  “I'm not for extending the unemployment benefits any further …

D.C., Hawaii Most Democratic, Utah Most Republican State in '11  —  North Dakota and Louisiana tilt more Republican than they did in 2010  —  PRINCETON, NJ — Hawaii shows the largest advantage for the Democratic Party over the Republican Party among U.S. states, along with the District of Columbia, in the first half of 2011.

America's debt is not its biggest problem  —  For a few days there it seemed like President Obama was the master of the bond market.  This is a Triple-A nation, he intoned on Monday, and always will be a Triple-A nation no matter what some rating agency says.

Secret peace talks between US and Taliban collapse over leaks  —  Secret exploratory peace talks between the United States and the Taliban leadership have broken down after details of the negotiations were leaked, Western diplomats have told The Daily Telegraph.

Anarchy and Austerity: Why London Won't Be the Last City to Burn  —  The Great Recession gave birth to a lost generation across the world, where youth unemployment rates stretch into the 20s, 30s and even 40s.  Those millions have responded with violence.  —  REUTERS

Poll: Spreading gloom about government; most dissatisfied with political system  —  In the aftermath of the tumultuous debate over raising the debt ceiling, Americans give Washington a strong vote of no confidence, with barely a quarter saying the federal government can fix the nation's economic problems …

Poll: New Yorkers want same-sex marriage law to stay put  —  Washington (CNN) - Just weeks into a new law that recognizes same-sex marriage in New York, a new poll finds a majority of voters in the state not only support the legislation but would resist efforts to overturn it, as well.

Hear me now?  Union picketers ‘ridiculous’  —  A Quincy mom has disconnected her support for striking Verizon workers yesterday after a group of mouthy picketers surrounded non-union repairmen and turned a phone-line fix at her home into what she is calling a “ridiculous” protest scene.

White House photo sparks protest  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — A White House photographer was allowed to take and widely distribute a photo from the ceremony Tuesday for the return of the remains of 30 American troops killed in a weekend helicopter crash in Afghanistan despite the Pentagon's claim …

Assemblyman's Vehicle Is Hit by Gunfire in Brooklyn, but He Is Unharmed  —  A sport utility vehicle driven by Assemblyman William F. Boyland Jr. was hit by gunfire in Brooklyn on Wednesday evening as he rode with his 7-year-old son, a police spokeswoman said.

Sorry, Guys, There Are No More Kings  —  The romance is gone.  But don't worry.  It's not him; it's you.  —  It turns out we are the ones who failed Him.  We weren't prepared for a mega-dosage of awesomeness.  We were too dimwitted to grasp the decency of central planning.

Supercommittee gives Kerry chance to shine, worrying liberals  —  Sen. John Kerry's appointment to the debt-reduction supercommittee is his big moment to shine as a dealmaker and silence critics who have questioned his modest record of legislative accomplishments.

Dem leader wants jobs ‘supercommittee’  —  With national unemployment hovering above 9 percent, a leading House Democrat is pushing to establish a “supercommittee” for creating jobs.  —  Rep. John Larson (Conn.), chairman of the Democratic Caucus, wants to amend the recently passed debt-limit package …

The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy  —  As Jenny lay on the obstetrician's examination table, she was grateful that the ultrasound tech had turned off the overhead screen.  She didn't want to see the two shadows floating inside her.  Since making her decision, she had tried hard not to think about them …

Sharpton Responds: ‘I Used One Word Rather Than Another’  —  It's very interesting that Al Sharpton has characterized his epic flub as “I messed up a line” yet he does not actually play the clip so his audience can judge for themselves.  He just plays Rush Limbaugh talking about the gaffe instead …