Old boys, young boys in the OC GOP

As you know, OC right-wingers maintain a kind of Old Boy farm system—they spot hot young prospects (almost invariably young men) and groom ‘em, usually running ‘em through the Young Republicans for starters.

One of Tom Fuentes’ groomies was a young fella named Jeffrey Ray Nielsen, the son of a local GOP mayor. Fuentes wrote him letters and bought ‘im suits at South Coast Plaza; he even took ‘im to dinner and sauna at the Balboa Bay Club, or so Nielsen wrote in one of his letters to a kid in Virginia. Naturally, young Jeff’s local GOP connections got him into a fancy local lawfirm. I bet he had one of those Junior Deputy badges, too. He prayed a lot. He knew Mike Schroeder.

He was an up-and-comer.

But then, in 2003, he was accused of pedophilia. Gosh. He noisily denied the charge and flashed his pious Christian credentials for several years. But then another young victim turned up—he kept some of Jeff's romantic/pious letters—and so he was convicted. Yep, admitted it and everything.

Dang!

Today, R. Scott Moxley, who is likely more responsible than anybody for bringing Jeff to justice, reports that they’ve let loose the former Great Right Hope:

Ex-Dana Rohrabacher Aide Turned Convicted Pedophile Gets Out of Prison

Jeffrey Ray Nielsen—the Orange County Republican activist, close Washington, D.C., aide to Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and convicted pedophile—is out of prison and living in Laguna Beach, according to a California Attorney General's website that tracts the whereabouts of sex predators.

Twenty months ago, in March 2008, a judge sentenced Nielsen to serve 36 months in prison after he reluctantly acknowledged that he was guilty of targeting seventh, eighth and ninth grade middle school boys as his sex partners.

I previously reported that Nielsen landed in a private prison. He was also charged with possession of a huge cache of man-boy and boy-boy sex pornography, but a bonehead mistake by prosecutors allowed that count to expire before taking necessary court action.

Getting justice in the case was never a sure thing. The 39-year-old Nielsen, once an intern for District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, liked to brag about his personal connections that extended to then-Sheriff Mike Carona. Indeed, thanks to his friendship with OC Republican Chairman Scott Baugh, he landed a well-paying job at a large law firm and a gig representing a local government agency as a lobbyist.

With the aid of high-powered criminal defense lawyer Paul S. Meyer, Nielsen spent nearly five years viciously attacking his accusers and portraying himself as a persecuted Christian conservative who was being smeared by a liberal press, naming this paper. (While he awaited trial, the Orange County Register wrote a story about how Nielsen loved puppies and, oddly, didn't mention the pending sex crimes charges.)

At one point, Meyer attempted to derail the Weekly's investigation by alleging to the FBI that I was part of blackmail scheme against his client. The laughable tactic didn't work. Nielsen ultimately pleaded guilty after I found a second boy in Virginia who backed up his story with love notes Nielsen had sent him. The State Bar of California revoked his license to practice law….

Do you ever stop and think just what kinds of people the OC right-wing Old Boy network comprises? Start with those with criminal convictions, and then work down to those just getting and keeping lucrative jobs despite gross incompetence and abject sleazitude. And I'm not even counting all those priests they protected for all those years.

If there is a God, I bet He's pissed.

See also: Mentoring Dos and Don'ts

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner :"like angels clearing their throats"

"Stille Nacht, Heilege Nacht" by Peter Meinke

At Christmas, my sisters and I
learned to sing carols in German:
Grandpa would give us a quarter
apiece for performing, though
only Carol could carry a tune.
After the start of the War
Father forbade us to practice,
and when Grandpa asked for his songs
we told him they weren't allowed.
You are German, he shouted. Sing!

Singt, mein kinder, für mich!

We stood mute, unhappy, ashamed,
between father and son locking eyes
while the U-boats were nosing the currents
and propellers coughed in the skies
like angels clearing their throats.

*

1st Amendment in the Classroom

In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

First Amendment in the Classroom

At a time when faculty groups are increasingly worried that a Supreme Court ruling is being used to limit the free speech rights of public college professors, a federal judge has declined a college's request to do just that. ¶ The judge's ruling keeps alive First Amendment claims in a lawsuit by June Sheldon, who in 2007 lost an adjunct science teaching job … at San Jose City College. Sheldon lost her job following a student complaint about comments she is alleged to have made during a class discussion of the "nature vs. nurture" debate with regard to why some people are gay. ¶ Some students complained that her comments suggested that she did not believe anyone could be born a lesbian, and that the way she endorsed the "nurture" side of the debate was offensive….

Sheldon sued the college in federal court.... Judge Ronald M. Whyte, while rejecting parts of the suit, turned down a request by the San Jose/Evergreen Community College District to dismiss the First Amendment claims. ...[T]he ruling states that [Sheldon] has First Amendment rights and doesn't lose them by virtue of the speech in question taking place while she was teaching at a public college….