Jon Huntsman Comes Out Swinging  —  ABC News' Jake Tapper reports:  —  In an interview to air on THIS WEEK Sunday, former Utah Governor and US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman came out swinging against his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination.  —  Some excerpts:

Rove: Palin will run  —  Former Bush advisor Karl Rove says he believes former Alaska governor Sarah Palin will enter the Republican presidential race sometime around Labor Day.  Appearing on Fox News Saturday morning, Rove said Palin “has a schedule next week that looks like that of a candidate, not a celebrity.”

Obama's Beach Reading  —  VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. - It's here... President Obama's summer vacation reading list, and it's heavy on fiction.  —  Mr. Obama, who is vacationing on Martha's Vineyard, picked up a couple of books during an outing Friday with his daughters, Sasha and Malia.

Gov. Christie admits climate change is a real problem, that human activity plays a role  —  TRENTON — In case anyone had any doubts on where Gov. Chris Christie stands on climate change, he made his position crystal clear this afternoon: It's real and it's a problem.

Dismal poll numbers for Obama in PA  —  Economy drags down approval numbers in Pennsylvania, a state the president would likely need to win a second term.  —  U.S. President Obama holds a baby after landing in Buzzard's Bay before boarding Marine One to take him to Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts (August 18, 2011)

Iran sentences 2 U.S. hikers to 8 years in jail  —  Iranian authorities sentence two Americans arrested and detained along the Iran-Iraq border to eight years in prison, state television cited an unnamed judicial source as saying.  —  Reporting from Beirut— Iranian authorities sentenced …

Verizon Union Worker Hospitalized After Altercation in Riverhead  —  A Verizon union worker was hospitalized after a physical altercation with a non-union Verizon manager Thursday in Riverhead.  —  Dennis Dunn was taken to the hospital following a squabble with George Googe, an out-of-state Verizon manager.

Our Politics Are Sick  —  We have a tendency to elect presidents who seem like the antitheses of their immediate predecessors — randy young Kennedy the un-Eisenhower, earnest truth-telling Carter the un-Nixon, charismatic Reagan the un-Carter, randy young Clinton the un-H.W. Bush, cool and cerebral Obama the un-W.

The Imperial Presidency  —  Rick Perry, governor of Texas, has only been in the presidential race for 20 minutes, but he's already delivered one of the best lines in the campaign:  —  “I'll work every day to try to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can.”

If You Read One ‘Serious’ Newspaper Article This Weekend ...  ... well, that's not bad for mid-August.  But please let it be this one, by Jackie Calmes in today's New York Times, about the economic and political consequences of the House GOP's anti-deficit push.

Giffords is now aware of who died in massacre  —  For nearly seven months, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was intentionally kept in the dark about the six people who died in the Jan. 8 shooting spree near Tucson.  —  Although Giffords knew that she had been shot and that six people had died …

MOODY'S ANALYST BREAKS SILENCE: Says Ratings Agency Rotten To Core With Conflicts  —  A former senior analyst at Moody's has gone public with his story of how one of the country's most important rating agencies is corrupted to the core.  —  The analyst, William J. Harrington …

Has Japan Gone The Way Of Japan?  —  Something I've sporadically wondered about since the US fell into its funk and people started wondering if we would go the way of Japan is whether Japan has actually gone the way of Japan.  Like consider the unemployment rate:  —  That's not so bad.

WEEKLY ADDRESS: Getting America Back to Work  —  WASHINGTON— In this week's address, President Obama spoke to the American people from the Corner Country Farm in Alpha, Illinois on the need to create jobs and strengthen the economy.  President Obama reminded the American people that we still …

Seven ways Rick Perry wants to change the Constitution  —  Rick Perry has many ideas about how to change the American government's founding document.  From ending lifetime tenure for federal judges to completely scrapping two whole amendments, the Constitution would see a major overhaul …