O’Reilly and Rivera’s Root

The cause of Bill O’ Reilly and Gerald Rivera’s skirmish… The deaths of Alison Kunhardt (17 years old) and Tessa Tranchant (16).

First, let's agree that Virginia Beach is a nice place to live. The beaches are beautiful. The climate is mild. The schools are good. The city is relatively safe.

Virginia Beach also has gangs, illegal immigrants and occasional irrational outbursts from the people who run it.

Police Chief Jake Jacocks, for instance, said he found it "ironic that had the intoxicated driver been born and raised in Virginia Beach, little notice would have been given this senseless tragedy by the media or the community at large."

Wrong, Chief.

Any time an alleged drunk is accused of killing two people, it's news.

Unfortunately, when the culprit is a homegrown hairball, we're stuck with him.

In this case, the suspect, 22-year-old Alfredo Ramos, admitted he is in the country illegally.

The public was astonished to learn that not only had Ramos had earlier brushes with the law, but during those encounters - including a DUI conviction in Chesapeake - the Mexican's immigration status was of no interest to authorities.

We all know the laws are a federal matter and that the feds don't do enough to enforce them. Still, the cities didn't even try to find out if Ramos was here legally.

That's why the common-sense crowd is outraged.

Virginia Beach officials need to stop pretending this was just a fatal car wreck. They should use it as a catalyst to fix their flawed policies toward illegal immigration.

Instead, they defend the indefensible. And they even found a way to make a bad situation worse.