A lighthearted look at news of the day:

President Obama wants you to know he’s not an emperor, and he’ll order the imprisonment of anyone who disagrees.

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Texas Sen. Ted Cruz compared Obama’s executive order on immigration last week to the second Catilinarian conspiracy against ancient Rome by Lucius Sergius Catilina. Yes, this is exactly what most American voters are thinking, too.

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Oh that Ted Cruz! He’ll do anything to pander to the history Ph.D. vote.

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Obama’s action will keep up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from being deported. However, he did nothing to prevent Californians from deporting the 1-10 Oakland Raiders.

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After making the politically risky announcement, the president headed to Las Vegas, where he reportedly put the national debt on 25 red, just because he was feeling lucky.

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Senate Democrats, meanwhile, decided last week to reject the Keystone Pipeline, pretty much ensuring that the only thing to go down a pipe will be the political career of fellow Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.

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Sen. Landrieu, locked in a runoff election against a popular Republican in an oil-rich state, may want to become a Raiders fan. That team may lose, but at least its players still try to block for each other.

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Melissa Burton of California didn’t like her daughter’s boyfriend a few years ago. “He just wasn’t someone our family approved of,” she said. Like any good parent, she probably thought it couldn’t get worse, until her daughter announced her engagement to Charles Manson.

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Manson, the 80-year-old notorious mass-murderer with a swastika carved into his forehead, had little to say about the upcoming wedding. It goes without saying he’s captivated.

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A man in Southern California stabbed his potential employer during a job interview last week. At least now he has an answer for what his biggest weakness is.

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To be fair, the suspect apparently didn’t think he would get the job, but word has it people in the office told him to take a stab at it.

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You know what’s really stupid? Relying on the “stupidity of the American voter” to get Obamacare passed and then telling American voters about it.

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A legislative committee supports bringing back the firing squad as a method for executing prisoners in Utah, apparently believing the state hasn’t had enough people make fun of it lately.

A lighthearted look at news of the day:

Republicans and Democrats seem ready to allow the Keystone Pipeline to expand to the Gulf Coast. But President Obama won’t hear of it. Maybe he worries about keeping the pipeline safe. After all, the Keystone Cops already are busy guarding the White House.

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It turns out Pepsi has perfected a new drink formula that combines the taste of Doritos with Mountain Dew. If that isn’t a recipe for an energy crisis, I don’t know what is.

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Millions of college students heard the news from Pepsi and marveled at how someone could put the perfect breakfast into a can.

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Chinese hackers apparently broke into U.S. federal weather computers recently and no one noticed for almost a month. In the meantime, the nation lost millions of dollars in spoiled picnics.

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Next, the Postal Service claimed its computers had been hacked by China. But the joke was on the Chinese. All they found on the other end was a lot more debt for them to cover.

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Before leaving a summit meeting in China last week, the president was roundly criticized for chewing gum at an Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting. Apparently, he didn’t bring enough for everybody.

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As part of the summit meeting in China, Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping put on traditional purple shirts. As you can imagine, it took a lot of behind-the-scenes negotiating just to get Putin to wear any shirt at all.

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The European Space Agency landed a probe on a comet last week. The probe was the size of a washing machine, which at first had the comet’s filthy inhabitants excited.

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A 16-year-old young man who works at a Target in Texas became an instant celebrity recently when a young woman who thought he was cute secretly took his picture and put it on the Internet. Now he has agents wanting to land him modeling contracts and television deals, without him ever having had to demonstrate any real talent. The Kardashians and Paris Hilton must be appalled.

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When Dr. Craig Spencer checked out of the hospital last week, the United States was Ebola free for a few hours. But then an infected surgeon who was working in Sierra Leon flew in for treatment. I wouldn’t say the nation’s new Ebola Czar has little to do, but rumor has it he ordered a wide screen TV and a few cases of Pepsi’s new Dorito-Mountain Dew drinks for his office. 

A lighthearted look at news of the day:

Last week Americans turned back their clocks — to 1930. That was the last time Republicans had the kind of majority in the House they won in Tuesday’s election. Of course, 1930 isn’t exactly a year Republicans like to remember.

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Could it be just a coincidence that Americans voted for a sharply divided government at the same time they voted to make marijuana legal in Washington, D.C.? Sounds like “the grand experiment” just took an interesting turn.

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It’s bad enough we have a budget deficit in Washington. Now we’ll have a munchies deficit, as well.

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Lest you think official Washington will remain sober as it tries to work through the nation’s problems, consider that President Obama’s first reaction to losing Congress was that he looked forward to sharing bourbon with the new Republican Senate president. It may not be prudent any longer to ask, “What’s the buzz in Washington?”

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I don’t think this is what computer people mean when they say everything is moving to the cloud.

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Democrats in Utah bucked the national trend and actually gained a seat in the state House, meaning they now get to move their caucus meetings out of the janitor’s closet.

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Nationally, Democrats spent election season trying to distance themselves from President Obama. Apparently, the voters said, “OK, we can help you with that.”

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A 102-year-old woman in Los Angeles voted for the first time on Tuesday. Apparently, she wanted to really study the issues and be sure before casting a vote for William Howard Taft.

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Actually, 102-year-old Guadalupe Portillo became a naturalized U.S. citizen just before casting a ballot. She said she hopes to see Congress pass immigration reform in her lifetime. Apparently, when opponents of reform say people need to “get in line” for citizenship, the line is really long.

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For you movie fans, Godzilla just turned 60. The next film in the series will feature him joining with AARP to attack forces that want to reform Social Security.