Dammit,

Moralistic right wingers can really piss me off (In this case, I’m not talking about Sen. Santorum, though I should be). But that just makes it more fun to watch them fall, Jimmy Swaggart style. From Joe Conason, an update on the status of Richard Delgaudio (full story in the Washington Post). Delgaudio was one of the people who brought Paula Jones to the public eye; as Conason explains, “Delgaudio literally brought Paula Jones to public attention in 1994. That was when one of his fundraising fronts, the “Legal Affairs Council,” paid her travel and hotel expenses to appear at the Consevative Political Action Committee conference in Washington, where she gave a brief account of the indignities she had allegedly suffered years before.” [This may be when he first learned that if you pay people who are in dire straights then they will do things that you want them to, an acquired skill that he would soon put to further use].

What’s he been doing since then? Mostly conservative fundraising and PAC activity. Oh, and also using some portion of the proceeds thereof to pay minors to get naked in hotels, reports the Washington Post: “Delgaudio was charged with taking sexually explicit photographs of a 16-year-old girl. He paid the girl — a single mother and high school dropout — by the hour for photo shoots at the Deluxe Plaza Motel in Baltimore, according to court documents and Baltimore City Police Detective Randy Wynn, who investigated the case.” Jackass. The judge instructed him to not visit the prostitute-ridden area around the Deluxe Plaza Motel anymore and gave him two years probation.

At sentencing, Delgaudio’s attorney told the judge that Delgaudio “plans to donate $5,000 to help ‘young mothers in great need.'” Delgaudio piped up and said “actually, Your Honor, that’s exactly what I was doing in the hotel when the police came in”. Ok, I made that last part up, but the rest is true. But seriously, maybe Delgaudio should just stay away from young mothers in need.

AB

P.S. Also via Conason, it seems like Santorum can’t tell the difference between sex between consenting adults and sex with dogs. Go read it.

UPDATE: I’m a day late and a dollar short; Atrios had the Degaudio story on Tuesday.