You just have to read a story with a headline like this:

"Parking 'squat' Bookseller stakes out same spot for 11 years."

Gov. Rick Perry made a splash the size of Texas into the Republican presidential field this week. He plunged in with events in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, demonstrating each step of the way that he's not shying away from controversy, or attention.

On Monday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Perry showed he is more than happy to attack even the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

"If this guy prints more money between now and the election," Perry said, "I don't know what y'all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas.

Sad news from the Indianapolis Star:

"Jennifer Haskell, 22, a senior at Ball State University, died this morning from injuries suffered in Saturday's stage collapse at the Indiana State Fair.

Twelve members of Congress have until Thanksgiving to cut roughly $1.5 trillion from the federal deficit. Among the six Democrats and six Republicans on the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, dubbed the "supercommittee," is longtime Montana Sen. Max Baucus.

The Democrat is one of the longest-serving members of Congress currently in office. He's been in the Senate since 1978, but it wasn't until 2001, when he became chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, that he appeared in the national spotlight.

Republicans are slamming President Obama for going on a 10-day vacation amid tough economic times. Obama said he'll propose a jobs program upon returning to Washington. And Texas Gov. Rick Perry is changing the dynamics of the GOP presidential race. Guest host Tony Cox talks politics with US News & World Report's Mary Kate Cary and The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart.

There's word from Voice of America this hour that members of the Georgetown University men's basketball team and players from China's professional Bayi Rockets club have "cleared up some of their differences ... a day after they fought on a basketball court in Beijing."

According to VOA:

All indications are that Mitt Romney has a real primary fight on his hands. Long suspected as being a Republican in Name Only by many of his party's hard-core conservatives, he's faced with two rivals for the GOP presidential nomination — Rep. Michele Bachmann and Texas Gov. Rick Perry — with strong appeal to that key segment of the party.

But Romney has some critical advantages. Not the least of them is he's been a presidential candidate before, running against a politician — Sen. John McCain — who was an experienced national campaigner himself.

As the U.S. economy takes hit after hit, President Obama is taking heat for his 10-day fun-in-the-sun vacation at Martha's Vineyard that began Thursday.

From the left: Colbert I. King, op-ed writer for The Washington Post, observed: "Mr. President, Martha's Vineyard is the last place in the world you should visit. ... You simply don't have time to take time off from America."

From the right: Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist, told the Daily Beast that Obama is "acting like the rich guys he wants to raise taxes on."

Brain-eating amoebas have killed three people so far this summer. The victims include a 9-year-old Virginia boy and a 16-year-old Florida girl; both apparently became infected while swimming in warm, stagnant water. That makes the typical summer health warnings about swimmer's ear and sunburn seem mundane by comparison.

This morning in Jonesboro, Ark., Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, known as the "West Memphis Three," will reportedly appear at a surprise hearing where many outlets are reporting that they — or at least Echols and Baldwin, with some reports saying all three — will be released after spending 18 years in prison for the 1993 murders of three young boys. Echols had been sentenced to death.