Remember the sudden execution of North Korean demigod Kim Jong Un's "traitorous" uncle? Now they're saying—and this comes with a huge grain of propaganda salt—that the uncle and several of his closest aides were stripped naked and locked in a cage with 120 of North Korea's hungriest dogs.

The bad news? The National Security Agency has champagne tastes for its technology—in that it's trying to build a quantum computer so powerful it could crack any and all brands of data encryption. The good news? It doesn't seem to be anywhere close... yet.

Now that a federal judge ruled the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone calls perfectly legal, the ACLU has promised an appeal that could one day head to the US Supreme Court.

An undocumented immigrant won the right to practice law in California, after the state's supreme court helpfully pointed out that immigration violations are civil offenses, not criminal, and that being undocumented doesn't affect someone's "moral turpitude."

Unemployment benefits, left to die as a casualty of last month's rare bipartisan federal budget compromise, could be revived later this month if a few Republicans go along, according to Senate Democrats probably looking to stoke the fires of campaign season more than anything else.

North Carolina, Part I: "American Idol sensation" Clay Aiken maybe wants to run for Congress as a Democrat.

North Carolina, Part II: A town councilman in Indian Trail wants to run a right-wing write-in campaign against a Republican senator. So he quit his current job. With a letter written in Klingon.

The weather out east remains shitty and snowy. Cable news will spend a lot of time talking about it. Some people even died!

Meanwhile, in South Sedan, cable news will spend a lot less time telling you about escalating ethnic violence and anemic peace talks that have forced the US to evacuate most of its diplomatic staff. South Sudan split from Original Sudan a little more than two years ago.

The Original Cheerios that kids hate and adults eat only grudgingly and covered in toxic sugar will get to be GMO-free, General Mills has magnanimously declared. The flavored kinds that everyone actually likes and wants to eat, including the kind with the goddamned cartoon honeybee, will remain afflicted.

The scientists marooned for days on an Australian ship swallowed by swelling Antarctic ice have been lifted to freedom, finally, by a Chinese helicopter. The operation was not without some modest drama.

The new pope is way more popular than the old pope. Francis, in nine months, drew three times as many pilgrims to the Vatican than his abuse-scandal- and Nazi-Youth-affiliated predecessor managed in all of 2012.

JUST BECAUSE THEY FOUND OUT DOGS LIKE TO POOP LINED UP WITH THE NORTH AND SOUTH POLES, HERE'S A BUCOLIC SCENE YOU MAY NOT WANT TO WATCH WITH BREAKFAST OR A SNACK.