TRENDING: ‘Idiot’ jab lobbed at Perry  —  (CNN) - Former Treasury official Bruce Bartlett labeled newly-minted Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry “an idiot” Friday.  —  Bartlett, who served at Treasury under former President George H.W. Bush and as a domestic policy adviser …

Feingold says he won't run in 2012  —  He'll continue teaching law, working on book  —  By Craig Gilbert of the Journal Sentinel  —  Democrat Russ Feingold has decided he will not be a candidate for political office next year, taking himself out of the running in 2012 for either U.S. senator …

Number of Green Jobs Fails to Live Up to Promises  —  Flanked by a cadre of local political leaders, Mayor Chuck Reed of San Jose used a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a solar power company last week to talk up the promise of the green economy.  —  Mr. Reed called the opening of the new headquarters …

Teen girl gang assaults woman in brazen daylight attack outside Philadelphia City Hall  —  An astonishing video has emerged of a vicious gang of teenage girls assaulting a female pedestrian as she walks outside a city hall in broad daylight.  —  The woman, who has not been named …

Bad luck?  Bad faith?  —  “We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, got the economy moving again. .   . .  But over the last six months, we've had a run of bad luck.”  —  Decorah, Iowa, Aug. 15  —  A troubled nation wonders: How did we get mired in 9.1 percent unemployment …

DeFazio says Obama lacks will to fight, may lose Oregon  —  EUGENE, Ore. - Oregon Congressman Peter Defazio is traveling around his district and leveling verbal body blows at President Obama.  —  In his Eugene office Wednesday, Defazio accused the President of lacking the will to fight for the promises he made to get elected.

Burger King freshens fast-food image, kicks King to the curb  —  In the first of many steps to reinvent itself over the next year, the struggling fast-feeder Friday will announce that it's dethroning the creepy King character — and other wacky, teen-targeting stuff — and refocusing on a customer it had all but forgotten: Mom.

Parking ‘squat’  —  Eleven years ago, Charles Mysak snagged a primo parking spot on the corner of Columbus Avenue and 68th Street — and he hasn't budged since.  —  The sidewalk bookseller keeps his inventory piled up in the beat up green '94 Civic, held partially together with duct tape …

Watching Armageddon From an Armchair  —  Watching the world slide slowly back into recession without a fight, even though we know perfectly well how to prevent it, is just depressing beyond words.  Our descendents will view the grasping politicians and cowardly bankers responsible …

The President's Island Retreat  —  Is his visit to Martha's Vineyard a sign that he's giving up?  —  The phrase of the day is “new lows.”  It blares from every screen.  The number of Americans satisfied with the ways things are going hits new lows—11%.  President Obama's popularity: new lows.

VIDEO: Herman Cain says he'd ‘be dead’ under ‘ObamaCare’  —  Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said he would “be dead” if “ObamaCare” had been in place when he was diagnosed with cancer.  —  Speaking at a campaign event Thursday in Lexington, S.C., the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza …

Gov. Rick Scott's original transition e-mails accidentally deleted, state now says  —  The e-mail accounts of Rick Scott and most of the governor-elect's transition team were deleted soon after he took office, potentially erasing public records that state law requires be kept.

Ugh: Greta and Sarah Palin rally behind Tea Party poser Orrin Hatch  —  I just read a very bizarre blog post about entrenched incumbent Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch by Fox News anchor Greta van Susteren and then watched an equally distressing interview van Susteren conducted last night with Sarah Palin regarding Hatch.

Bachmann on why she worked for IRS: “First rule of war is ‘know your enemy’”  —  This is fun.  Michele Bachmann, on the campaign trail today, offered what seems to be a new explanation for her previous work as a lawyer for the Internal Revenue Service, something that has drawn some ire from the right.

The Wrong Idea  —  Stocks on Wall Street dropped sharply on Thursday, with investors spooked, again, about the euro-zone debt crisis and the sputtering United States economy.  —  Yet, even at this hour, leaders on both sides of the Atlantic seem determined to handcuff fiscal policies …

Bad news from NASA: If we don't reduce carbon emissions, the aliens might come and kill us; Update: Not a NASA report  —  This is really just the story of Sodom and Gomorrah repackaged with a scientific patina for the green agenda, no?  An omnipotent super-being looks down upon mankind …

Mortgage Rates Hit 50-Year Low  —  Back in June, in a post about adjustable-rate home loans, Bucks mused about how nice it would be to have a mortgage interest rate that began with a “3.”  The way things are going, that time may not be far off for fixed-rates loans, as well.

Executive Order—Establishing a Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce  —  ESTABLISHING A COORDINATED GOVERNMENT-WIDE INITIATIVE TO PROMOTE DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE  —  By the authority vested in me as President …

Court rules against Catholic Charities in foster-care case  —  A circuit court judge ruled Aug. 18 against four Catholic charities in a lawsuit against the state over the right to continue with foster care services.  —  Judge John Schmidt ruled that the state did not violate the rights …

Our prison walls are too high to look over, moan terror suspects  —  Suspected terrorists are complaining about a fence around the exercise yard in their high-security prison which restricts their view of the horizon.  —  The alleged extremists are locked up while the Government tries to remove them from the country.

Plants and animals migrating upward as climate changes  —  Across the globe, plants and animals are creeping, crawling, slithering and winging to higher altitudes and higher latitudes as global temperatures climb.  —  Moreover, the greater the warming in any given region …

Awesome Wrongness  —  I hear that there was some action in the markets yesterday.  But we were too busy sipping champagne at the Nobel Museum to care.  —  OK, seriously: things are looking really terrible, And crucially, they're looking terrible in the wrong way, at least if you wanted …

Deal for West Memphis 3 may allow innocence claim  —  Three men imprisoned since 1994 for the brutal murders of three 8-year-old boys in eastern Arkansas could be released from custody as early as Friday if a deal with prosecutors goes as planned, victims' relatives and a person familiar with the case told The Associated Press.