Immigration issues are getting complicated in Washington. A bunch of Republicans now are wishing they could outlaw undocumented meetings between the president and Democrats.
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In the last two weeks, the president met with Democrats twice, once to work out a deal to keep the government funded for another three months, and the other time to work out a deal to help the undocumented children of immigrants. If this works out, Republicans soon may be the ones begging for amnesty, for whatever it is they have done to offend the White House.
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Actually, the president had better be careful with his own party’s base, or he might end up being cast as the nation’s biggest railroad booster. That is, whenever Republicans up for election see him coming, they will start making tracks in the opposite direction.
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Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has come out with a book about what happened in the 2016 election. Sure, it’s easy to wistfully imagine what things would be like with Hillary in the White House — evening dinners with Democratic leaders working out solutions to budget problems and immigration … Wait, could Trump be doing all this just to sabotage her book sales?
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Free markets and competition are great for consumers. When the government broke up the telephone monopoly 35 years ago, who could have guessed that one day we could buy a new phone for only $999?
 ---Sure, $999 sounds expensive for the iPhone X, but we have to remember that phones in the early 1980s couldn’t turn your face into a talking, singing and dancing poop emoji.
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Back in those unenlightened days, we didn’t even know what a poop emoji was. How did we survive?
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Apple’s newly unveiled iPhone X uses facial recognition as an unlocking device. That opens a world of fun for identical twins and makes Halloween a night without phone service, which pretty much justifies the price.
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How far have we come in 35 years? The newest, coolest phone was unveiled at a press conference without anyone bothering to ask whether it actually can make and receive phone calls.

A lighthearted look at news of the day  
Welcome to September, the month when football can finally distract us from everything else happening in the world. 
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Actually, the college season kicked off more than a week ago. How distracting is football? Kim Jong Un fired a missile over Japan and Guam thought of signaling for a fair catch. 
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Protesters descended on Washington last week to march against President Trump's proposed cuts to national service programs. Unfortunately, someone thought it would be a great idea to have them all dress in silly dinosaur costumes, which gave the protest all the impact of a Disney parade for kids. 
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Judging by the looks of it, people would have thought the dinosaurs were protesting the arms race, or at least advocating for shorter arms. 
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The dinosaur costumes were supposed to compare budget cuts to the extinction of dinosaurs. But everyone knows federal budget cuts had nothing to do with dinosaurs going extinct. That had to do with the price of gasoline, which was always rising higher because they hadn't died yet and turned into oil. 
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Actually, that's not true. Fossil fuels come from plants and animals that died long before dinosaurs came on the scene and started passing law in Congress. 
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First, Russia kicked out hundreds of U.S. diplomats to retaliate against U.S. sanctions. Then last week, the United States retaliated by closing a Russian consulate in San Francisco. Taken together, these moves send a strong message … that being a diplomat can be an unstable profession. 
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Seriously, you have to feel sorry for the 755 diplomats who are being sent home from Russia. It happened so fast they didn't even get a chance to dress like dinosaurs and protest in Red Square. Where will we put these people? Don't worry! They are coming home in time for harvest season, which is fortuitous considering the president's new anti-immigration policies will open a lot of jobs in the fields. 
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Salt Lake Mayor Jackie Biskupski finally agreed to close a road near the homeless shelter to cut down on drug trafficking this week, even though she wasn't sure it was the best thing to do — proving you don't have to be a roads scholar to be a mayor. ​