We were going to express our indignation over an American resident being executed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, but then we were reminded of our indignation over a newsroom being shot up, over massacres in schools and churches, over a woman being run down by a neo-Nazi.

We were reminded of our indignation over children being stolen from their parents by our government, and our indignation over our government’s deliberate carelessness in returning them.

We were reminded that our President once bragged he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue without losing supporters.

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You may have heard the news that following his outing as a — what’s that word? — hebephile, Roy Moore is now only polling even with his opponent for the special Senate election in Alabama next month.

But that’s not the full story. Among white voters, Moore leads by 17 points. Among black voters, he trails by 55 points.

This is not unusual. We only need look back as far as last Tuesday to see that opportunistic race-baiter Ed Gillespie won the Virginia white vote by 15 points. He’s not the state’s next governor because he lost the black vote by 75 points, and the hispanic vote by 35 points.

You may sense a pattern here. It’s not new.

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Puerto Rico, we have learned this week, is a hundred miles long by thirty miles wide, which makes it roughly equivalent to the Willamette Valley, in Oregon, where we grew up. Its population numbers some 3.4 million American citizens, or a half-million more than our home turf. The distance to Miami is around a thousand miles, which will also get you from Eugene to Los Angeles. By air, that’s about two-and-half hours.

Of course, that’s via civilian flight. You can cut that time and distance in half from Guantanamo, in Cuba. We happen to have a naval base there. You may have heard of it.

Among the things our nation asks of its military is to lend a hand during natural disasters. A dozen years ago, Joint Task Force Katrina was created to coordinate efforts between soldiers and FEMA civilians. It was only formed after FEMA was shown to be tragically inadequate to the task, three days after the New Orleans levees failed.

Puerto Rico has been without power and water for nine days. There has been no all-hands relief effort.

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God bless the Freedom Caucus.

No, really.

Well, okay, sorta. Thanks to the House Deplorables, who resisted Ryancare because it didn’t drown enough puppies, the whole bill came crashing down, and we’re enjoying a bout of tantric schadenfreude that even Sting would envy.

Heck, we may yet escape this Administration alive.

We’ve seen from the start that Donald Trump sucks at running the government. We didn’t see until this week that Paul Ryan sucks at running the House. All those fire-breathers, free at last to turn These United States into scorched earth, and all they can do is immolate themselves, bless their shriveled hearts.

Which leads us to wonder whether this was ironically inevitable: Is extreme gerrymandering, the source of Republican power in the House, also the source of its weakness?

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How can the Democrats live with themselves and call themselves AMERICA!ns after refusing to hunt down the sick, the infirm, the aged and stuff Gatling guns in their guts, firing and shouting praises to FREE!dom as their intestines fly out their backs in the name of shareholder value, exactly as the Founding Fathers intended?

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Our guest colloquists are ABC news leprechaun George Stephanopoulos and Indiana Governor Mike Pence.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I think one of the problems that people have pointed out is that in Indiana, your civil rights laws don’t include sexual orientation as a protected class. And even some of the supporters of the bill who were — who appeared with you when you signed the bill, Eric Miller of Advanced America wrote that, “It will protect those who oppose gay marriage.”

He put up this example. He said, “Christian bakers, florists and photographers should not be punished for refusing to participate in a homosexual marriage.”

So this is a yes or no question.

Is Advance America right when they say a florist in Indiana can now refuse to serve a gay couple without fear of punishment?

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