I confess I’d never given Puerto Rico much thought. I knew the place was a territory, but I never really knew why. I mean, if we didn’t mean to grant the island statehood — and why would we? — why didn’t we let it become its own nation?

There have been those who sought just that for decades. I recall from my childhood that a bunch of Puerto Rican nationalists took pot shots at the White House while Harry and Bess Truman were in residence. Now I can understand we wouldn’t want to be seen caving in to the demands of terrorists, but that was about 70 years ago. It’s long past time that we stopped worrying about a place that, as a result of always electing Democrats, is sinking in a sea of red ink.

I mean, if we never intended to adopt it, why did we want to be its foster parent?

I understand it would be unseemly to cut the place loose this soon after it’s suffered through two major hurricanes. On the other hand, when I heard that the mayor of San Juan, a typical left-wing dingbat named Carmen Yulin Cruz, claimed that Donald Trump was inflicting genocide on Puerto Rico, I felt my gorge rising.

For one thing, Trump has sent a rescue force numbering over 10,000, and we have seen the food and water pile up on the docks because along with taking out the electricity, hurricanes named Jose and Maria washed out many of the roads to the interior. It hasn’t helped that Puerto Rican truckdrivers apparently haven’t stepped up to help transport the necessities.

For another thing, if Mayor Cruz weren’t a typical liberal, ever ready to hurl rocks at Republicans while displaying her own breathtaking ignorance, she would know that, like Vizzini in “The Princess Bride,” who kept tossing around the word “inconceivable,” until Indigo Montoya finally had to point out that the word didn’t mean what Vizzini apparently thought it did, she was misusing “genocide.”

Genocide happens to be the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national or racial group. It was what the Turks attempted to do to the Armenians, what Hitler tried to do to the Jews and what Turkey, where bad habits never die, is today trying to do to the Kurds.

I doubt if Mayor Cruz actually believes that Trump is out to kill off all the Puerto Ricans, but like her fellow pinheads on the mainland who have no problem comparing Trump to Hitler and Stalin, when liberals hold forth, the truth inevitably dies from lack of oxygen.

Wouldn’t you think Mayor Cruz would be a lot angrier with God than she is with Trump?

I have a friend who regards Puerto Rico as a hole in the ocean so far as the United States is concerned. I think so, too, but I wouldn’t want word to get around because I’d like to see us auction off the place, describing it as a garden paradise in the brochure, but perhaps admitting it is currently something of a fixer-upper.

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For the life of me, I don’t know why the Republicans have gone out of their way to destroy their credibility with their base. For seven years, they kept begging for the chance to get rid of ObamaCare. Then once they had the chance, they kept tripping over their own feet doing their impression of the Keystone Kops.

Personally, I didn’t care for any of the bills they came up with. But, then, that’s because I don’t think the federal government has any more business meddling with healthcare than with education. But I’m enough of a realist to understand that when it comes to what they regard as entitlements, Americans tend to be very large babies who insist on hanging on to their candy.

Therefore, the best we could expect of the 52 senators is that they would pass something, almost anything, so they could at least say they had repealed the vilest piece of legislation ever saddled on the American electorate.

The worst of the sorry lot was John McCain who got himself off a sick bed so he could join the Democrats in casting a nay vote. I have never thought much of Sen. McCain, who regarded himself as a statesman even if nobody else ever did, but that struck me as a particularly low blow, delivered not only to the American voter, but to his GOP colleagues, who will now have a very difficult time being re-elected in 2018.

When I asked myself why McCain would go to such lengths to sabotage the efforts to repeal ObamaCare, I suddenly remembered that during the primaries, Trump had said he didn’t admire POWs, he admired those who weren’t captured. At the time, I merely regarded it as a stupid, insensitive, remark. I now have reason to suspect that McCain didn’t forget and certainly never forgave.

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Although we haven’t been hearing much about Robert Mueller’s witch hunt, wouldn’t you think by now that even Chuck Schumer and James Comey would stop promoting the Russian connection?

I’m sure that Putin no longer expects Trump to invite him to the senior prom. Not after bombing Russia-backed Syria; sending additional troops to Afghanistan to fight Russia’s allies, the Taliban; voicing support for NATO; selling missile defense systems to Poland and Romania; and opposing the Russian-blessed Iran nuclear deal.

The Left used to make fun of Sen. Joe McCarthy because he was always changing the number of Communists he insisted were conniving away at the State Department, but they have no problem fudging numbers when it’s in their own interest. For instance, do you remember when they were first pushing the collusion story that they kept referring to 17 intelligence agencies? Mrs. Clinton, for one, was wont to say: “We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election.”

At the time, I found myself wondering about all those agencies. Were they including the intelligence-gathering arm of the Cub Scouts?

As it happens, there were only three agencies, the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency, and, as we’ve all seen, over the past several months, all three have become as politicized as the DNC or, if you prefer, the NY Times or CNN.

But because the spies have shown themselves to be actively engaged in undermining this administration, the Democrats don’t have a problem with it. In fact, Chuck Schumer could barely conceal his delight when he said: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you. So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he (Trump) is really dumb to do this.”

Former George W. Bush speechwriter/Never Trumper David Frum tossed in his own two cents, saying: “CIA message to Trump: you mess with us, get ready for a leakstorm of Biblical proportions.”

There is always the question when security agencies are involved about who is going to watch the watchers. Clearly, at least so long as their illegal activities are directed at Trump, those who have sworn an oath to defend the Constitution, don’t have a problem with standing by, rubbing their hands gleefully and chuckling over their good fortune.

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When President Trump refrained from firing Jeff Sessions for recusing himself, I was relieved. My mistake. So far as I’m aware, the only thing that Sessions has done in eight months is conduct a well-publicized campaign against MS-13, a gang of Salvadoran punks who terrorize their countrymen in the U.S.

I hope the agents of the Justice Department jail, deport or kill, the bunch of them. But in the meantime, I don’t see Sessions doing anything about jailing Hillary Trump or going after the likes of Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Ben Rhodes, Loretta Lynch, Lois Lerner, James Comey, or any of the other skunks who lurked in Obama’s woodpile.

It doesn’t help Sessions’ credibility as America’s Top Lawman that he comes across like a southern spinster lady. It’s hardly the image of a tough crimefighter, but an Attorney General doesn’t have to look or sound tough; he just needs to be tough and to believe in his gut that nobody in America is too big to jail.

I can’t help hoping Trump has Rudy Giuliani on speed-dial.