Ah, memories....

For much longer than I care to admit, I lived in Orange County, CA, or, as all eleven liberals living there put it, behind the Orange Curtain.

So I was not surprised in the slightest by this:

A Republican congressional candidate said in an interview Thursday he was not personally involved in sending a letter threatening Hispanic immigrant voters in California, a mailing that prompted a state investigation.

"I did not do this. I did not approve of any letter," Tan D. Nguyen, the Republican challenger to Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, told The Associated Press.

The investigation is focused on Nguyen's campaign, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Nguyen, who has made halting illegal immigration a main plank of his platform, said he believed an employee in his office might have used his campaign's voter data base to send the letter without his knowledge. He said that employee has been "discharged."

The letter, written in Spanish and mailed last week to an estimated 14,000 Democratic voters in central Orange County, tells recipients: "You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time."

It is a federal and state crime to threaten or intimidate voters.

For those of you not familiar with the special brand of wingnuttery practiced there, the guy who held this very seat when I lived there was the immortal B-1 Bob Dornan. You can read about him here.

I lived one district away from Dornan's neighborhood. My congressman was Dana Rohrbacher, posing here with his Taliban friends:



Those were the days.