If you could take your eyes off the senators doing battle and the Iranians headed to space, you saw a great deal of controversy in the news this week. Take our news quiz and find out how much you know about the week's important developments.
Here are some random but real hints: As long as they don't water board them; you'll have to get your Safeway coupons some other way; true fact: Facebook pages immediately appeared offering to drive him to the liftoff; and definitely not a monkey. Answers are at the bottom of the quiz.
1. The White House changed course this week and said it would do what?
a. Provide Congress with classified information on its use of unmanned drones to kill American citizens believed to be in the al-Qaeda leadership
b. Order the Justice Department to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in the U.S. Supreme Court
c. Organize joint skeet-shooting outings with Republican members of Congress
d. Allow the sequester (deep spending cuts) to go into effect if the U.S. House did not approve a new budget by February 23
2. U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, who succeeded John Kerry as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was immediately thrown into controversy. What is the controversy?
a. He was forced to hold hearings defending the Obama administration's use of drones to kill terrorists
b. He was implicated in a White House coverup of Benghazi secrets
c. The Daily Caller website alleges that he used a private jet owned by one of his donors to fly to the Dominican Republic for assignations with prostitutes
d. The New Republic published photographs showing Menendez cavorting with Iranian agents at a seaside resort
3. The U.S. Post Office announced plans to save $2 billion annually by doing what?
a. Going completely digital
b. Renegotiating union agreements
c. Closing 5,000 local post offices
d. Ending Saturday letter delivery
4. A mouse, a turtle, some worms, and now a monkey. What are they?
a. Species expected to become extinct within 20 years because of climate change
b. The only food allowed for contestants in the new "fans vs. favorites" series of CBS' Survivor
c. Living creatures that Iran has shot into space
d. The only items left in the estate of British heiress Tilly Swydell, who died on Wednesday after losing $250 million in the past six months
5. What did British scientists discover underneath a car park in Leicester?
a. The body of Jimmy Hoffa
b. The skeleton of Richard III
c. An original signed copy of the Magna Carta
d. A bunker for the king's use in the event of a World War II invasion by the Nazis
6. European police revealed the discovery of an Asia-based criminal operation involved in what?
a. Driving up the cost of eurozone debt
b. Illegally shipping German computer technology to Iran's space program, despite the UN embargo
c. Human trafficking between Russia and the former Soviet satellite states
d. Fixing football -- er, soccer -- matches
7. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose term in office ends this June, indicated he was open to continuing to serve his country in what capacity?
a. Being sent into space
b. Succeeding Ali Khamenei as supreme leader
c. Starring in Iran's popular reality TV series, Oh No You Didn't
d. Becoming the Islamic Republic's first ambassador to Israel
8. Paris, France, struck down what out-of-date law?
a. A prohibition on women wearing pants
b. A ban on negative comments about the height of the country's president
c. A 1946 law that renamed "frankfurters" as "saucisses liberté"
d. A law requiring all candidates for federal office to recite the names of the months in the 1794 revolutionary calendar
9. Texas Governor Rick Perry and President Barack Obama found themselves on opposite sides of what issue?
a. The Boy Scouts of America's ban on homosexual members
b. Texas secession
c. They made a bet of beer (Lone Star Beer vs. the original White House brew) over the results of the Super Bowl
d. Iran's space program
10. Iran released a video it claimed was what?
a. The number one most-watched Farsi video on YouTube
b. President Obama secretly ordering assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists
c. Decoded footage taken by a U.S. drone that Iran captured a year ago
d. American plans for the invasion of Syria
BONUS: Why is Donald Trump suing comedian Bill Maher for $5 million?
a. Maher claimed Donald Trump's skeleton was dug up under a British parking lot
b. He says Maher reneged on a bet to donate $5 million to a charity if Trump could prove he is not the child of an orangutan
c. Maher said "several cattle and a day-old piece of bread" have a better chance of the 2016 GOP presidential nomination than does Trump
d. He says Maher reneged on an agreement to appear as a contestant on Trump's Celebrity Apprentice
The news and the quizzes don't stop there! Join us for our next live Week to Week political commentary program with a news quiz at The Commonwealth Club on February 8 and March 4 in downtown San Francisco. Also see the Week to Week website for event dates, audio, and more.
ANSWERS: 1) a. 2) c. 3) d. 4) c. 5) b. 6) d. 7) a. 8) a. 9) a. 10) c. BONUS) b.
EXPLANATIONS OF THE HINTS: Conservative critics of the Obama administration's drone program have noted that its legal justification for killing U.S. citizens who are believed to be terrorists is ironic considering some of the program's defenders opposed Bush administration torture of suspects; most of our mail consists of those bundled flyers of coupons; Iranian Facebookers immediately offered to help their president get into orbit; and orangutans are not monkeys, and to suggest otherwise is to invite a deluge of letters from the language police.