The Valley Viewpoint

There it is. The legal version of “Back in my day…”
You can almost hear the oak paneling creak when it’s said.

Lawyers repeat that phrase not because anyone asked, but because it’s a reflex—like objecting on instinct or billing .2 hours for thinking about billing. It’s the throat-clear before a story that’s half confession, half humblebrag, and fully immune to interruption.

Here’s the truth: when lawyers say “when I was a young lawyer,” what they mean is “before I knew how badly this job was going to mess with me.”

It’s not nostalgia. It’s trauma with better tailoring.

When I was a young lawyer, I believed the rules mattered more than the people enforcing them. I believed preparation guaranteed fairness. I believed judges read everything. I believed opposing counsel played by the same ethical rulebook I did. I believed that being right was enough.

Adorable, really.

That phrase is a permission slip to admit—without actually admitting—that you once believed the profession’s marketing materials. Law school sold you precision, logic, justice, and reason. Practice handed you delay, leverage, ego, and a calendar designed to break your spirit one adjournment at a time.

So older lawyers repeat the phrase because it’s the only socially acceptable way to say:
I didn’t know a damn thing—but I was very confident about it.

It’s also how lawyers talk about mistakes without ever using the word mistake. Nobody says, “When I committed malpractice-adjacent behavior out of sheer optimism…” They say, “When I was a young lawyer, I trusted that client.” Or, “When I was a young lawyer, I thought the court would be reasonable.”

There’s your punchline.

And let’s not ignore the ego piece. The phrase lets lawyers remind you they survived something you’re still drowning in. It says, I made it out. I have opinions now. I wear comfortable shoes. It’s a subtle flex wrapped in mentorship language.

But underneath the snark, there’s something else going on.

“When I was a young lawyer” is code for this job will change you in ways you don’t see coming. It’s how seasoned lawyers try—awkwardly, imperfectly—to warn you that intelligence won’t save you from exhaustion, that integrity won’t shield you from cynicism, and that the system doesn’t reward virtue nearly as much as it rewards endurance.

So yes, the phrase is overused. Yes, it’s usually followed by a story you’ve already heard. Yes, it often ignores the fact that the profession has gotten harder, not easier.

But one day—after your own illusions have been professionally dismantled, after your own “this will be resolved quickly” predictions have aged poorly—you’ll hear yourself say it.

“When I was a young lawyer…”

And in that moment, you’ll realize the phrase isn’t about age at all.

It’s about the version of yourself that still believed the law was what it claimed to be—before experience, reality, and a lifetime of footnotes corrected the record.

Here’s what’s happening — stripped of jargon, slogans, and political varnish.

Rockland County legislators are considering a bill that would limit how local police cooperate with federal immigration authorities, including ICE. The proposal would restrict information-sharing, narrow when detainers can be honored, and draw hard lines around when county employees — including law enforcement — are allowed to work with federal agencies.

In response, Rockland’s police chiefs and law enforcement unions stepped forward this week with an unusually blunt warning: this legislation would make policing harder, not safer.

That should have ended the debate.

Instead, it exposed a deeper and more troubling reality — one that keeps repeating itself across New York: politicians are rewriting the rules of public safety without listening to the people actually responsible for it.

Let’s be clear about what this bill is — and what it is not.

This is not about protecting victims.

It is not about stopping racial profiling.

And it is not about making immigrant families safer.

It is about political actors deciding that cooperation itself is the problem.

For decades, law enforcement has relied on coordination across jurisdictions because criminals don’t respect boundaries. Serious offenders exploit every crack in the system — false identities, overlapping authorities, slow communication. Information sharing isn’t optional; it’s essential.

This bill deliberately weakens that system.

Supporters claim it will build “trust” in immigrant communities. That talking point collapses the moment you say it out loud. Trust is built when police stop criminals — not when government creates blind spots criminals can exploit.

Law-abiding immigrants are not the ones avoiding police.

Victims are not the ones gaming jurisdictional loopholes.

Families trying to live quietly are not the ones using fake names, fake papers, or outstanding warrants to stay hidden.

Yet this legislation treats cooperation itself as suspect — as if police officers sharing information is some moral failure rather than standard practice.

And here’s the part no one in the legislature wants to own: they don’t bear the consequences.

They won’t be the ones responding to a domestic violence call involving a repeat offender who slipped through the cracks.

They won’t be the ones explaining to a victim’s family why an arrest didn’t happen sooner.

They won’t be the ones standing alone on a roadside stop, second-guessing whether doing the right thing violates a county ordinance.

That burden falls on cops — and on communities.

Rockland’s law enforcement leaders didn’t ask for mass deportations or dragnet enforcement. They asked for something far more modest and far more reasonable: the ability to cooperate when public safety demands it.

That used to be called common sense.

Instead, county lawmakers are choosing symbolism over substance — mistaking press-conference applause for policy success.

Here’s the Valley Viewpoint reality check:

A law that blocks cooperation does not create safety — it creates gaps.

A government that tells police to stand down is not standing up for anyone.

And ignoring law enforcement warnings isn’t compassion — it’s negligence.

If Rockland County wants to debate immigration reform, Congress is the venue for that fight. But experimenting with public safety at the county level — over the objections of the very professionals tasked with protecting the public — is reckless.

This isn’t about dignity.

It’s about power, politics, and pretending there won’t be consequences.

There will be.

A New York jury recently awarded $2 million to a young woman who detransitioned after undergoing irreversible medical procedures as a minor. The verdict came in a medical malpractice case against a plastic surgeon and a psychologist, with jurors concluding that the doctors failed to meet basic standards of care—rushing a psychologically distressed teenager through life-altering decisions without adequate evaluation, caution, or properly grounded clinical judgment.

That verdict alone should have stopped the conversation cold.

But instead of reckoning with what happened, much of the political class is still pretending this case is an anomaly—or worse, a distraction. It isn’t. It’s an indictment of what happens when politics captures medicine and dissent is treated as heresy.

For years, questioning gender-transition protocols—especially for minors—was framed as moral failure. Doctors who hesitated were pressured. Parents who asked questions were shamed. Legislators were warned to stay silent. The message was unmistakable: affirm quickly, or be labeled dangerous.

So medicine stopped acting like medicine.

In this case, a child was not treated with deliberation or restraint. She was treated as a political validation. Psychological distress was not deeply explored; it was fast-tracked. Irreversible interventions were justified as urgent and necessary—not because long-term data demanded it, but because ideology insisted delay itself was harm.

When she later detransitioned, the system that rushed her forward vanished. No protocols. No expertise. No accountability. Just a shrug and a suggestion that regret was rare enough to ignore.

This is what political orthodoxy does to professional judgment.

Clinicians were assured they were “following the science,” even as they admitted—quietly—that the evidence base was thin, training uneven, and long-term outcomes unknown. Hospitals were told this was settled. Regulators looked away. Anyone who dissented was accused of causing harm simply by asking whether caution might be warranted.

In every other area of medicine, this would have triggered alarms. You do not perform irreversible procedures on minors while admitting the data is incomplete. You do not treat uncertainty as a moral failing. You do not lower standards because the cultural moment demands speed.

Yet here, standards collapsed—because politics demanded certainty where none existed.

Now the courts are stepping in, not to settle culture wars, but to ask the questions medicine refused to ask:

Were proper evaluations done?

Were alternatives considered?

Were clinicians adequately trained?

Did anyone slow this down?

The answers, increasingly, are no.

This verdict is not an outlier. It is the beginning of a reckoning for a movement that confused moral urgency with medical rigor. And the quiet backpedaling now underway—softened language, revised guidelines, raised age thresholds—isn’t growth. It’s damage control.

Court records don’t care about slogans. Juries don’t defer to activist consensus. They deal in evidence, standards, and harm.

And what this case makes brutally clear is something politics tried to silence: protecting children is not bigotry, skepticism is not violence, and medicine is not a loyalty test.

When ideology runs the exam room, patients pay the price.

This time, a jury said so—out loud.

They didn’t surrender out of conscience.

They surrendered because the ground finally shifted beneath their feet.

For months, the Clintons treated congressional subpoenas the way royalty treats bad weather—something that happens to other people. Delay. Dismiss. Let lawyers posture. Let time do the work. It’s a strategy that has served them well for decades.

Until it didn’t.

The Epstein story refused to die. In fact, it metastasized—flight logs, photos, emails, testimony, document releases—each one stripping away the comfortable ambiguity that once protected powerful names. What had once been rumor hardened into record. What had been deniable became documented.

And then something far more dangerous happened: the rules changed.

After watching Trump associates jailed for contempt of Congress, the Clintons suddenly found themselves facing a system that no longer played by the old exemptions. When even Democrats began breaking ranks—signaling they would not shield the party’s most protected figures—the message became unmistakable: defiance was no longer safe.

This wasn’t about transparency. It wasn’t about cooperation. It was about survival.

So the white flag went up.

Agreeing to testify wasn’t an act of courage; it was an act of calculation. Better to answer questions than to risk criminal contempt. Better to endure embarrassment than establish a precedent where “too powerful to subpoena” finally dies.

For years, Americans were told there were two justice systems—and we were scolded for noticing. Epstein exposed the architecture of that lie. Not just who flew where, but who was protected, who was ignored, and who was assumed untouchable.

Now the untouchable are being touched—carefully, reluctantly, and only because the political weather turned.

The coming testimony may disappoint those hoping for fireworks. Power rarely confesses dramatically. But that’s not the point.

The point is that for the first time in a long time, the Clintons didn’t dictate the terms. They responded to them.

And that alone tells you how much has changed.

History doesn’t usually announce itself.

It gives warnings first. Subtle ones. The kind people dismiss because they’re inconvenient.

Minnesota is ignoring them.

And folks here in the Hudson Valley shouldn’t pretend that makes it someone else’s problem.

What’s happening out there isn’t some distant policy fight or cable-news food fight. It’s about whether the rule of law still means what it’s supposed to mean — and whether local leaders get to decide which laws count.

Before Fort Sumter, nothing looked like a civil war. States pushed back against federal authority. Local officials reassured their neighbors that this was just politics, just posturing, just principle. Everyone thought they were in control.

Until nobody was.

When state and local leaders decide they won’t cooperate with federal law enforcement because they don’t like the law, that’s not activism — it’s defiance. When officials signal that federal agents are the problem, not criminals, they aren’t calming tensions. They’re daring them to grow.

And that matters here.

Because the same arguments being made in Minnesota get repeated in New York. In county legislatures. In press releases. In carefully worded statements about “standing in solidarity” — always vague, always safe, always avoiding the hard question: Do the laws still apply, even when they’re unpopular?

The Hudson Valley is not immune to this thinking. We’ve seen it in debates over cooperation with federal authorities, in elected officials choosing slogans over public safety, in silence when clarity is required. We like to tell ourselves we’re reasonable, practical, above the chaos.

History doesn’t care.

This isn’t about immigration as an abstract issue. Reasonable people disagree on immigration. This is about something more basic: either laws apply everywhere, or they apply nowhere. You don’t get to enforce the laws you like and ignore the ones that make you uncomfortable.

Once leaders start teaching people that federal authority is illegitimate, the damage is already done. Trust erodes. Lines harden. Every encounter feels like a test of wills instead of a routine act of governance.

That’s how systems crack — not all at once, but locally first.

Nobody in the Hudson Valley wants to be part of some grim chapter in a future history book. But pretending the warning signs are “somewhere else” doesn’t make us wiser. It just makes us later.

History doesn’t shout at first.

It clears its throat.

And that sound?

You can hear it — even from here.

There was a time when riding the subway came with a kind of certainty. Not about delays or crowds—those were always baked in—but about familiarity. I could almost guarantee that somewhere between the turnstile and my stop, I’d run into someone I knew. A classmate from high school. A coworker from a job I’d already half-forgotten. A neighbor I’d nodded to a thousand times without ever really knowing. The subway was a moving reunion hall, a place where lives intersected again by accident and routine.

Back then, recognition was effortless. Eye contact turned into smiles. Names were called out over the roar of the tracks. What are you doing here? was asked with genuine surprise, as if the city itself had momentarily bent to make the meeting happen. We compared stops, careers, kids, plans—then disappeared back into our separate tunnels, comforted by the sense that the world was smaller than it seemed.

Now, those connections are mostly gone.

The rides feel quieter, even when they’re loud. The faces are unfamiliar. The names don’t come to mind because there are none to recall. The subway still moves millions of people every day, but the sense of running into your people has thinned out, like an old neighborhood slowly emptying as the years pass.

And yet—every so often—it happens.

Not recognition, exactly. Something subtler.

A glance held just a second longer than necessary. A quick smile. A nod exchanged between people clearly of the same era. Same posture. Same eyes that have seen enough to know better than to expect too much from a weekday commute. There’s no conversation, no introductions. Just a shared, unspoken understanding.

What are we doing here?

Not in frustration—more in wonder.

We don’t ask because we already know the answer. Life moved fast. Time passed. Obligations accumulated. The subway kept running while everything else changed. We’re still here because we kept going. Because showing up became habit. Because this was the track we learned to ride.

Those nods don’t lead anywhere, but they linger. They’re small acknowledgments that we’re not alone in feeling the shift—that others remember when the ride felt different, when the city felt smaller, when familiarity rode alongside us.

The subway no longer reunites me with my past.

But every now and then, it reminds me that others are carrying the same quiet memories—standing on the same platform, waiting for the same train, fluent in the quiet language of a shared glance.

New Yorkers were clear.

They didn’t forgive.

They didn’t forget.

They didn’t vote him back.

And yet this week, Andrew Cuomo is back—armed not with a mandate, not with vindication, but with something arguably more powerful: a weekly radio microphone.

Cuomo, who resigned as governor under the weight of substantiated findings of sexual harassment, abuse of power, and retaliation, has landed a Sunday night show on 77 WABC. One hour. Call-in format. “Fact-based dialogue,” we’re told. No paycheck, supposedly, so everyone can pretend this is civic-minded rather than strategic.

Let’s dispense with the pretense.

Cuomo did not claw his way back through accountability. He didn’t confront the findings head-on. He didn’t repair the damage done to the women who spoke up, or to the public trust he shattered. He ran for mayor—and lost. Then ran again—and lost again. The voters spoke plainly.

That should have been the end of it.

Instead, the media stepped in where democracy stopped.

A radio microphone is not neutral. It is power. It allows narrative control without cross-examination, tone without scrutiny, and repetition without consequence. It is the perfect instrument for a political figure who wants relevance without responsibility.

On Sunday nights, there will be no sworn testimony.

No independent fact-finding.

No hard follow-ups about retaliation, intimidation, or the Attorney General’s report that forced Cuomo from office.

There will be anecdotes.

Friendly callers.

Carefully framed memories of “leadership” and “crisis management.”

This is not dialogue. It is revision.

The station’s owner, John Catsimatidis, says the goal is balance and thoughtful conversation. But balance without accountability is not journalism—it’s laundering. Political laundering.

Cuomo doesn’t need to refute the record if he can outlast it. He doesn’t need to answer the allegations if he can simply talk around them. Change the venue, soften the lighting, lower the volume—and eventually misconduct becomes “controversy,” controversy becomes “old news,” and old news becomes “misunderstood.”

That is how power evades consequences in New York.

Redemption requires acknowledgment, responsibility, and repair. Cuomo has offered none of those things. What he has been given instead is access—access to listeners, influence, and relevance—without consent from the public that already rendered its verdict.

New York rejected Andrew Cuomo.

The voters closed the door.

WABC opened a studio.

And once again, the message is unmistakable: in New York, accountability is optional—if the media decides you’re still worth hearing.

There’s a moment in public life when policy stops being about outcomes and becomes about signaling. New York City just crossed that line.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is preparing to sign a bill that permanently bars U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from operating inside any city correctional facility, including Rikers Island. Not limited cooperation. Not oversight. Not reform. A total prohibition.

This is being sold as compassion. It isn’t.

No one is talking about dragnet raids or random stops. We’re talking about individuals who are already arrested, already detained, already inside secure city jails. We’re talking about situations where coordination between law enforcement agencies has long been routine, practical, and frankly obvious.

Instead, New York City has decided that even that level of cooperation is unacceptable—not because it endangers anyone, but because it conflicts with an ideological narrative.

Supporters call this a “Safer Sanctuary” law. But safety isn’t created by pretending federal law doesn’t exist. Safety isn’t enhanced by forcing agencies to work at cross-purposes. And safety certainly isn’t improved when elected officials refuse to distinguish between the innocent and those already charged with crimes.

Former Mayor Eric Adams tried to reintroduce a basic principle: that public safety requires cooperation across jurisdictions. That effort was blocked. Now the City Council has gone further, making sure no future mayor—regardless of circumstances, crime trends, or public concern—can even attempt it again.

At the state level, Governor Kathy Hochul is advancing similar restrictions, discouraging local police across New York from working with ICE at all. City and state leadership are now aligned in one clear message: immigration enforcement is not just unwelcome—it will be actively obstructed.

This is governance by symbolism. It feels good. It polls well. It generates applause. And it conveniently avoids responsibility for what happens next.

Because when cooperation is outlawed, accountability disappears. When something goes wrong—when a preventable crime occurs, when a known offender is released, when a victim asks why warnings were ignored—there will be no one to answer. Just press releases and moral language.

This isn’t about being anti-immigrant. That’s the cheap argument used to shut down debate. This is about whether leaders are willing to make distinctions, exercise judgment, and accept responsibility for consequences.

New York City has chosen ideology over judgment. It has chosen posture over practicality. And it has done so permanently.

The bill will be signed. The celebration will be loud. And the costs—quiet at first, then very real—will be paid not by policymakers, but by the communities they insist they are protecting.

There are days when gratitude arrives loudly—announcements, milestones, moments you know you’ll remember forever. And then there are days like this one, when gratitude slips in quietly, padded in on four small paws, curls up on the couch, and falls asleep under a blanket.

I look at Toby—tucked in, warm, safe—and I’m reminded that a good life is often built from the simplest things. A roof that holds. Heat that hums in the background without asking for attention. A couch worn just enough to feel familiar. A blanket that does exactly what it’s meant to do.

There was a time when I rushed past these details. When home was just where I landed at the end of long days, and warmth was something I assumed would always be there. Now, I notice it. I mind it. I understand how fragile comfort can be, and how much quiet work goes into keeping it steady.

Toby doesn’t know any of that, of course. He only knows that this is a place where he can rest. Where he’s welcome. Where the world outside—with its cold edges and noise—can be held at bay for a while. And in that, he teaches me something I should have learned sooner: safety is a gift, not a given.

I’m grateful that I have a warm home he can visit. Grateful that I can offer him shelter without thinking twice. Grateful that there is enough—enough space, enough calm, enough care—for both of us to exhale at the same time.

And if this small moment says anything beyond my own gratitude, it’s this: please take a little time today to make sure the folks you know are safe. A call. A text. A knock on a door. Warmth matters, and so does knowing that someone is looking out for you.

This isn’t a grand gratitude. It doesn’t need an audience. It lives in moments like this: a small dog asleep under a blanket, and the quiet realization that, for today at least, all is well.

And that is more than enough.

Federal Judge Margaret Garnett did not merely narrow an indictment when she dismissed the death-eligible murder counts against Luigi Mangione—she altered the balance of the entire case.

By striking the firearm-related murder charges tied to the killing of Brian Thompson, the court removed the most direct legal link between the defendant and the death itself. What remains are stalking charges—grave offenses, but ones that depend heavily on inference, intent, and causation rather than a single, concrete outcome.

That distinction matters.

Murder charges anchor a prosecution to a result. Stalking charges ask jurors to reconstruct motive, pattern, and legal causality. If even one juror hesitates—about intent, continuity, or whether the conduct legally caused the death—the case fractures. Reasonable doubt doesn’t need to shout. It only needs space.

This ruling created that space.

Evidence once central to a homicide prosecution now risks being viewed as contextual or prejudicial. The death, no longer the charge itself, becomes background. And when outcomes are pushed to the margins, juries often follow.

This is how defendants walk—not because the harm was unclear, but because the legal framework became easier to challenge and harder to unify. Narrower charges mean narrower narratives, and narrow narratives are easier to dismantle.

The decision may be doctrinally sound. But doctrine does not decide verdicts—jurors do. And in a system designed to protect against certainty, softening charges is often all doubt needs to win.

When the Ulster County Executive says she “stands with Minneapolis,” what she does not say matters just as much as what she does.

She does not say she stands with the law.

She does not say she stands with victims of crime.

And she does not say she stands with the families whose lives have been permanently changed by violent acts committed by individuals who were never supposed to be here in the first place.

That silence isn’t accidental — and it isn’t leadership.

Public officials swear an oath to uphold the law, not to selectively respect it when it becomes politically inconvenient. Immigration law is federal law. It was passed by Congress, upheld by the courts, and enforced by duly authorized federal agencies. Disagreement with enforcement tactics does not erase the law itself. Standing against enforcement without acknowledging that reality sends a dangerous message: that the rule of law is optional.

Even more troubling is what her statement ignores — the victims.

There are Americans, including New Yorkers, who have been raped, assaulted, robbed, and killed by individuals who entered or remained in this country illegally. Their families don’t get slogans or solidarity statements. They get funerals, courtrooms, and a lifetime of loss. When a public official speaks forcefully against enforcement but remains silent about those victims, it sounds less like compassion and more like indifference.

Standing with victims does not require cruelty.

Standing with the law does not require dehumanization.

But refusing to stand with either is a choice — and it is a political one.

If the concern is accountability, then say so clearly. Demand lawful enforcement and constitutional conduct. Support humane treatment and public safety. Condemn abuse and criminal violence. Leaders are capable of holding more than one truth at the same time.

But political signaling is not justice.

Silence about victims is not neutrality.

Leadership requires moral clarity.

Right now, that clarity is missing.

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While many if not most illegal aliens are decent people and are only illegally in the United States to provide for themselves or their families—an action that does not justify breaking the immigration laws of the United States—all of them are not decent and many are responsible for shocking crimes and incredible damage to families all across America.
Most everybody remembers the tragedy in New Jersey where illegal aliens wantonly killed three students and seriously injured another. A few people even remember that Jamiel Shaw was gunned down by an illegal alien gang member. However, very few people remember or even know that four year old Esmeralda Nava was kidnapped, molested, and strangled to death by an illegal alien child predator. The perpetrator that killed little Esmeralda told police that he carried the girl with one arm and muffled Esmeralda’s cries for her daddy with his other hand “until she stopped moving.’’
Almost nobody knows that the illegal alien sexual pervert that used and abused little Esmeralda Nava had been previously deported. Who remembers Min Soon Chang, an eighteen year old freshman at the University of North Carolina who was killed by a drunk driving illegal alien? In that case the perpetrator had at least three prior DWI convictions and had been previously deported 17 times. That is not a typo.
Who besides her family even know, let alone remember, that Danielle Gorectke, a vivacious 23 year old student at University of Wisconsin- Stevens Point was raped and beaten to death by an illegal alien?
Each one of these tragedies devastated an American family, and I could go on and on with more equally horrific stories. Each one of these tragedies was totally preventable if the perpetrator was not illegally residing in the United States.
Excluding breaking the immigration laws of the United States and committing ID theft and fraud, do illegal aliens commit more crime than legal immigrants? Probably, but nobody really knows. Do illegal aliens commit more crime than citizens? Most likely, but nobody really knows. What we do know is that the Justice Department does not report crimes committed by foreign nationals, illegal aliens, or even Hispanics (about 80% of illegal aliens are Hispanic). Interestingly, the DOJ does however, report crimes committed against Hispanics, including illegal alien Hispanics, but will not distinguish if the perpetrator was Hispanic themselves. (Crimes committed by Hispanics, including illegal alien Hispanics, go into the “Caucasian” category as “Hispanic” is an ethnicity, not a race.)
While no crime is ever justified and racially motivated crimes are particularly onerous in a civilized society, the reporting is a one way street the Left’s incorrect perception that “illegal aliens are just good family-values people that are here to do the work Americans won’t.”
When the government does not report crimes committed by illegal aliens, who are mostly Hispanic, but does report “hate crimes” committed against Hispanics it further distorts perceptions.
It is unfortunate that the Left often resorts to an intimidation tactic by labeling my positions as having the ‘uncomfortable stink’ of racism. Why does the Left use this label when a review of any of my previous columns would show nothing but a desire to make certain that our borders are secured and the immigration system has real integrity? Yet, those of us who take this position and make these demands are labeled as racists and xenophobes.
I recognize that our strength as a nation is built on the immigrant experience in America. I welcome legal immigration to this country. However, we are also a nation of laws and government should not adopt policies that encourage illegal immigration. Moreover, our neighbors should not carelessly use the word ‘racism’ when all one is doing is standing for the rule of law.
Illegal immigration is an insult to every American citizen, naturalized or native born.