There are a lot of interesting stories making their way into the headlines of local-for those of us living in New York City-news. Critically, a dispute has emerged between Mayor Bill De Blasio and City Council Speaker Viverito, who wants to continue to provide violent, criminal aliens with publicly-funded attorneys. This is the plan originally supported by De Blasio before the absurdity of this position was highlighted by current mayoral candidate Nicole Malliotakis. This division once again demonstrates the lengths open borders advocates will go to defend illegal immigration, regardless of the human cost.

Ms. Viverito isn’t the only member of the New York City Council to stand by a seemingly untenable position. As The Daily Beacon points out, Jumaane Williams has accused critics of sharia devotee and Internet tough guy Linda Sarsour of being members of the alt right. In other words, supporting gender equality, opposing Islamic terrorism, and being an advocate for Western values makes you a white supremacist. Who knew?!

An actual bigot might have been arrested in Manhattan, where a man who allegedly attacked an Asian man has been charged with third-degree assault.

In odd news, a Staten Island man has been hospitalized after being bitten by a poisonous East African gaboon viper. After being bitten, the individual proceeded to cut his pet’s head off. As someone who once had the much more prosaic-and less lethal-garter snake, I can attest to the difficulty of caring for these reptiles. My advice to those who are tempted to own an illegal, potentially deadly snake is…don’t.

The man you see (indistinctly) in the photo above is Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who spoke before a packed crowd at the Women’s National Republican Club last night on a variety of subjects. Although the invitation I responded to billed the evening as a discussion of sanctuary cities, Vance did not address the topic until prompted by an audience member during the question and answer session, approximately 40 minutes or so after he began speaking.

I can’t say I was surprised by his reluctance to address the subject, despite its topicality. The New York County District Attorney’s office is charged with the prosecution of those who violate the laws of New York State. Those who violate federal law are prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York-a point Mr. Vance emphasized when I pressed him on a recent decision to release a violent, self-declared member of MS-13 who was in this country illegally from prison.

That said, his office does occasionally come into contact with illegal immigrants through their encounters with the New York Police Department, which he implicitly acknowledged when he spoke of protecting the status of those who had been victims of crimes while residing in this country illegally. Putting aside the circular logic of this argument, i.e. aren’t predatory criminal aliens, such as the illegal day laborer who murdered acclaimed actress and director Adrienne Shelly, protected under the same umbrella sheltering domestic abuse victims, there is another objection to be raised. Namely, there is already a federal program, known as the U Visa, which ostensibly protects these individuals.

The idea that New York City needs to codify policy which directly conflicts with federal law in order to protect the safety of those in this country illegally is the height of absurdity. To the contrary, these directives actually imperil the lives and safety of those they ostensibly seek to protect-as well as the lives of American citizens-as those criminal aliens who abuse and terrorize their partners and children are given blanket immunity for crimes which would otherwise place them in the deportation pipeline and out of the reach of those whose lives they have destroyed. In fact, after Mr. Vance’s talk had concluded, a (legal) immigrant shared a personal anecdote with me about a hairdresser whose husband had attempted to suffocate her to death, but was allowed to remain in this country-illegally, naturally-even after being brought to the attention of the relevant authorities.

It should be said in Mr. Vance’s defense that he stated categorically that illegal aliens who had committed violent crimes should be deported, which is a far cry from Mayor De Blasio’s stance. However, it’s worth noting that the Manhattan DA is a political post, which is dependent upon the will of the voters, which in this case happened to be a group of New York Republicans. Just as his avowal of support for stop and frisk might have been downplayed before more progressive venues, it’s possible that he might have temporized even more on this subject if speaking to a group like the National Council of La Raza, or the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus.

Overall, the audience was surprisingly receptive to DA Vance’s message, which in retrospect probably shouldn’t have been that surprising. The Republican Party of New York City, but particularly the desiccated husk of a party which still exists in Manhattan, is run primarily by the Rockefeller and Lindsay Republicans who once exercised real power in this city and state. Adele Malpass, who delivered some introductory remarks before Cyrus Vance stepped up to the podium, praised the District Attorney’s efforts to kill a bill which would have prevented the arrest of innocent New Yorkers carrying gravity knives. I’m sure the GOP mainstay who asked him later in the evening what he was doing to crack down on gun dealers appreciated this bold stance against individual rights, but I was left rather unimpressed.

For what it’s worth, I thought the event was worthwhile, despite my many disagreements with Mr. Vance, including his apparent belief that compulsory voting, along the lines of Australia, could serve as a civic inducement. Having a public official willing to submit himself to cross-examination, however circumscribed, by the public is increasingly rare and worthy of praise. Hopefully, the officials responsible for some of the problems we encounter in this city on a daily basis will embrace this willingness to engage the public, but I won’t be holding my breath.

Miami-Dade is the latest city to come to the realization that Donald Trump really is President of the United States. Just like the Sheriff of Suffolk County, Carlos A. Giménez has recognized the new reality of a federal government which will actually enforce its immigration laws. The Obama cronies who were placed within the immigration bureaucracy, who used their positions to implement unconstitutional amnesties, are in the process of being purged. Of course, our own mayor has continued to insist that he will defy federal and state laws in order to ensure the safety of criminal aliens. He and other blue state partisans, as well as their accomplices in the media complex, have yet to realize that no matter how much they whine, Hillary Clinton is not President and neither is Barack Obama.

A new era is upon us.

If there’s anything more infuriating than our government’s willful negligence towards its citizens, it’s our news media’s insistence  upon obscuring the truth in pursuit of its virulent ideology. Why do I need to go to the website of a Trinidadian newspaper in order to discover the identity of a murderer living in my own city?! Under the protection, it should be noted, of  a man who insists upon destroying information that could lead to the apprehension of criminal aliens, including potential murderers and rapists! All because these criminals happen to belong to that protected Democratic class known as illegal immigrants.

Bill De Blasio is scum, Andrew Cuomo is scum, and there are not words to describe the creature who committed this crime-which would be punishable by death if we lived in a just society. However, there is no scum more noxious, more dangerous to our civilization, than the ghouls who didn’t see fit to identify why Alastasia Bryan was murdered in the first paragraph, if not the headline, of the story reporting her killing. Just remember, whenever you pick up a paper, watch a cable news program, or click upon a link from a website owned by media conglomerate, you are being lied to!

And the victims of these lies are soon forgotten by the general public. The Dominic Durdens, the Sarah Roots, the Adrienne Shellys, the Bologna family, Jamiel Shaw Jr., and Alastasia Bryan. You might all remember their names, but how many people remember why they’re no longer with us? As we head into the new year, we must recognize who the true enemy is. It’s not Donald Trump, nor Vladimir Putin, Pat McCrory, or whatever chimerical figure of hate the vultures who control the flow of information are trying to con the public into fixating our energies upon. Our enemies are those who are crafting these narratives in order to distract us from solving our nation’s most dire problems. The mainstream media should never be trusted. They are scum. As long as we don’t recognize that-and adapt to fight them-we will have more victims of monsters like Keon Richmond to mourn.

Assemblywoman Malliotakis asks some pointed questions about our leaders’ stampede to lavish taxpayer funds upon illegal aliens.