Romney gets in heated exchange with hecklers at Iowa State Fair  —  Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's (R) exchange with a few hecklers turned into somewhat of a shouting match while he was stumping Thursday in Iowa.  —  Romney faced aggressive inquiries with a liberal bent at the top …

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.)

Exclusive: Republican Camp won't rule out tax increases  —  (Reuters) - A leading Republican lawmaker would not rule out tax increases on Thursday if they could boost economic growth, adding that “everything is on the table” for a congressional panel charged with forging a deal to cut the deficit.

DeMint calls administration ‘anti-American’  —  Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) shared his unique take on the Obama administration yesterday. … Honestly, it's as if Jim DeMint has suffered some kind of head trauma, which prevents him from perceiving reality.  None of his condemnation makes any sense at all …

George Soros sued by ex-girlfriend for reneging on real estate promise  —  A beautiful Brazilian soap star has the lead role in her own daytime drama, which casts George Soros, the billionaire financier of lefty causes, as a heavy who not only broke her heart, but also reneged on a promise …

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.

Extremist T-shirt offers different message after the first wash  —  When the 250 T-shirts were donated to a right-wing concert in Germany, they looked perfect: A skull and crossbones, nationalist flags and the slogan “Hardcore rebels.”  —  But when the T-shirts were washed for the first time, the message changed.

Pa. judge gets 28 years in ‘kids for cash’ case  —  SCRANTON, Pa. — A longtime northeastern Pennsylvania judge was ordered to spend nearly three decades in prison for his role in a massive juvenile justice bribery scandal that prompted the state's high court to toss thousands of convictions.

Attorney for Graves, Rogers: Bank is at fault  —  CALHOUN — While U.S. Rep. Tom Graves was calling for fiscal responsibility in Washington his attorney was arguing in a lawsuit that a North Georgia bank is at fault for issuing Graves a $2.2 million loan the bank knew he could not repay.

Buffett: The lower stocks go, the more I buy  —  Warren Buffett discusses the lowered outlook for Berkshire Hathaway debt, why some of his businesses aren't hiring, and why U.S. debt remains triple-A rated in his mind.  —  By Andy Serwer, managing editor  —  Warren Buffett sees buying opportunities

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.

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.

John Podhoretz Is Not A Very Intelligent Person  —  I don't normally read books that seem like they'd be terrible, but once upon a time I had a work-related assignment to read John Podhoretz's Bush Country: How George W. Bush Became the First Great Leader of the 21st Century—While Driving Liberals Insane.

England Used to Be a Country of Men  —  With London succumbing to looters and muggers, it's time to ask what happened to the once-manly English people.  The August 9 issue of the Daily Mail, for example, includes a photo of a young man taking off his pants on the street as an impatient looter waits …

A modest proposal: Super-committee should focus on jobs  —  Yesterday Dem Rep John Larson made the audacious suggestion that in addition to creating a Congressional “super-committee” on the deficit, Congress should also create one to focus on job creation.  Given the deafening roar …

Bachmann Defends Home Turf - Will Join Perry in Waterloo on Sunday  —  Michele Bachmann has made her Iowa roots a central point of her presidential campaign.  As such, she hosted a welcome home event for residents of Waterloo, the town of her birth, at the Electric Park Ballroom the night before she formally announced her candidacy.

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.

Recent Decline In State/Local Tax Revenue Was The Worst Ever  —  Another look at the fact that our economy, far from suffering from an outburst of socialism, is actually suffering from a collapse of state and local government employment is offered by this chart of state and local tax revenue: