I depart America for two blissful weeks in Italy and return to find that my country has been transformed, rather rudely, into a totalitarian state on the order of Iran, possibly even North Korea. My telephone is directly plugged into something called PRISM.

I am in Positano, Italy, on the Tyrrhenian Sea, soaking up the sun and pondering the immensities. Pompeii is just down the road, or over the mountain, or somewhere nearby, and it seems to me that Pompeii is the future for America if things continue under Barack the Pitiable, not Rome as the left-wingers and the right-wingers seem to have agreed upon.

Recently in Washington the Newseum was saved from what could have been a very embarrassing event. Or maybe the people who run the Newseum would not have been embarrassed, but the institution was saved anyway. The Newseum is an interactive museum dedicated to the study of news and journalism. It was going to honor two terrorists as journalists before genuine journalists intervened.

Where are we now in this morass of Obama administration scandals? We have the Associated Press imbroglio.

How odd! There I was, Saturday evening in the Windy City at a fundraising event for the Chicago Rowing Foundation, and who do I encounter but the mayor of Chicago, His Honor Rahm Emanuel?

Though it pains me to say it, I have made my final judgment about the left. They do not like conservatives very much. In fact, they come to an immediate boil when we enter their admittedly quite limited range of perception.

It has happened again! Our gaffe-prone president has filed another blunder on his presidential record. At the dedication of George W. Bush's presidential library he invoked history with his usual mastery of detail. He placed President John F. Kennedy in Air Force One, "On the flight back from Russia, after negotiating with Nikita Khrushchev at the height of the Cold War."

It has come to my attention that there is a new derogatory term in American politics. It is "Angry White Male." Moreover, I am apparently a member of this low-down grouping of Americanos.

When asked on left-leaning MSNBC why President Barack Obama refrained from describing the Boston bombings as a "terrorist attack" David Axelrod, Obama's longtime political advisor, readily saw a political opportunity.

On the occasion of Lady Thatcher's death, there is widespread admiration and even applause for her premiership, but surely there ought to be gratitude too. After all, without her -- and without President Ronald Reagan -- the poor would be much poorer and without hope of bettering themselves.

WASHINGTON -- Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City ought to know by now that gun owners do not trust him.

The American left cares so much for humanity that it even expends copious draughts of compassion toward us, toward you and me, toward suave, degage conservatives. The left's members really fret over how elements of the "extreme right" are undermining the Republican Party, consigning it to oblivion.

Apparently New York City's Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg whiles away his last hours in the mayor's palace daydreaming. He has been mayor for almost three terms and though his mayorship may not have been as heroic or even as effective as that of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, it has at least kept the city up to Mayor Giuliani's standards of cleanliness, law and order, and an approximation of sense of financial rectitude.

When Senator Rand Paul took to the floor of the United States Senate the morning of March 6 he really -- as they say -- may have made a difference. It is a difference in our awareness of the issues facing the country.

I do not know about you, but to me this sequestration imbroglio is getting interesting. Last week, I wrote of my surprise that a basic untruth was being repeated over and over again by the White House, to wit, that the Republicans were responsible for the monstrosity of sequestration.

I have long contended that public policy issues are as complicated as they appear because the giants of Capitol Hill like it that way, particularly the giants of the left. Bills can be written more simply. Decisions can be phrased with a certain lucidity. Yet, if they were, the electorate would mull them over and, after a cup of coffee, make a decision on them. As things stand today, with talk of budget imbalance and of esoteric matters such as "sequestration," voters scratch their heads, blink their eyes and walk away. Who gives a hoot? It is time for my morning nap, perhaps, two naps.

I have long contended that public policy issues are as complicated as they appear because the giants of Capitol Hill like it that way, particularly the giants of the left. Bills can be written more simply. Decisions can be phrased with a certain lucidity. Yet, if they were, the electorate would mull them over and, after a cup of coffee, make a decision on them. As things stand today, with talk of budget imbalance and of esoteric matters such as "sequestration," voters scratch their heads, blink their eyes and walk away. Who gives a hoot? It is time for my morning nap, perhaps, two naps.

I am indebted to Amity Shlaes for gently correcting a joke of mine that dates back to July 8, 1972. On that date in the New York Times, I joshed that President Calvin Coolidge "probably spent more time napping than any president in the nation's history" and therefore was a successful president.

It has happened again. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the New York Times Book Review referred to by Paul Krugman the other day as "a long-time conservative," has essayed in the New Republic the modern conservative movement, and traced us all back to John C. Calhoun.

In the aftermath of the Super Bowl, it is perhaps salutary to take stock of professional football and to suggest a few reforms that might make the game more wholesome.