Free Republic

A Senate Republican requested an ethics investigation of Democrats who hinted they may use his personal scandal to fight his effort to defund part of Obamacare. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., has been demanding a Senate vote on a proposal to repeal federal contributions to help pay for healthcare coverage for members of Congress under the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. The provision was included in the 2010 legislation by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

Detroit Teachers Moonlight As ‘Sugar Babies’ To Offset Wage Cuts DETROIT (WWJ) - It’s back-to-school season and many Detroit teachers are struggling in the wake of budget cuts and overcrowded classrooms. According to the National School Supply and Equipment Association, the average teacher spent at least $485 on school supplies for their classroom last year. So, what are some Detroit women doing to offset their struggles in the classroom? Well, they’re becoming “sugar babies” of course — seeking financial assistance from wealthy men online. In the Detroit School District alone, 201 teachers are moonlighting as sugar babies to offset wage...

They look like shelters for hikers in a national park, but these wooden sheds in Switzerland have a rather less innocent purpose – they provide a discreet location for men to have sex with prostitutes. The drive-in "sex boxes" as they are being called, will be officially opened on August 26, as part of a drive by authorities in Zurich to regulate prostitution, combat pimping and improve security for sex workers. The nine garage-style structures, located in a former industrial zone in the west of the city, have been organised with typically Swiss precision. Drivers will have to follow a...

They look like shelters for hikers in a national park, but these wooden sheds in Switzerland have a rather less innocent purpose—they provide a discreet location for men to have sex with prostitutes. The drive-in “sex boxes”, as they are being called, will be officially opened on August 26, as part of a drive by authorities in Zürich to regulate prostitution, combat pimping and improve security for sex workers. … The site is only open to drivers of cars—pedestrians and men on motorbikes are not allowed—and will operate from early evening until 5 a.m. each day. …

When young girls are sold into marriage, as 38,000 are every day, they can expect a life with no education and few opportunities, little public autonomy outside of their adult husband’s control and an increased risk of death from pregnancy or childbirth, which are the number one killer of girls age 15 to 18 in the developing world. One in seven girls born in the developing world is married by age 15, usually sold by her family.

Washington (CNN) -- In what it called its largest crackdown to date on child prostitution, the FBI announced Monday that a nationwide operation over the weekend resulted in 150 arrests, with 105 children rescued. Authorities said the operation, which took investigators to race tracks and truck stops, also targeted the use of social media sites for child prostitution activity. Overall, the three-day undercover roundup Operation Cross Country took place in 76 cities and involved 230 law enforcement units, according to the FBI. ... He said at a news conference that a prime environment for child prostitution is major sporting events...

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Francis overhauled the laws that govern the Vatican City State on Thursday, criminalizing leaks of Vatican information and specifically listing sexual violence, prostitution and possession of child pornography as crimes against children that can be punished by up to 12 years in prison. The legislation covers clergy and lay people who live and work in Vatican City and is different from the canon law which covers the universal Catholic Church. The bulk of the Vatican's penal code is based on the 1889 Italian code. Many of the new provisions were necessary to bring the city...

The National Institutes of Health is spending $253,800 of federal taxpayer money to study ways to educate Boston’s male prostitutes on safe-sex practices. According to a description of the federally funded project, a previous study of male sex workers in Boston found that “almost one third (31%) were HIV-infected, and most (84%) had a steady male or female partner, thus the risk for HIV-infection/transmission is not only to/from their sex work clients but also to/from their primary partners… Notably, every participant reported using a variety of drugs and/or alcohol in the context of sex work in the prior 12 months”...

The Supreme Court has struck down a federal law forcing private health organizations to denounce prostitution as a condition to get AIDS funding. The justices said Thursday the law’s anti-prostitution pledge improperly restricts First Amendment rights. …

(Online Translation from Dutch/Flemish) Spring pierces through the dry leaves carpet in the Royal Park, but here and stabs also something else: a used condom, a tube of lubricant. During the day, but especially at dusk and at night here intensively gecruiset by gay men looking for sex partners. On the Internet the tourist quickly towards this Burgundian hunting ground: cruising is widely promoted in the front yard of the House and Senate. "Between the waffles and the wall behind the catwalk parade on July 21, the place to be, sir: the two small woods." (© Bart Dewaele) The Royal...

Time magazine's Zeke Miller, late of that august political journal BuzzFeed, has a brief article up on his magazine's site today heralding Hillary Clinton's joining the social media/microblogging service Twitter. The former First Lady and Secretary of State’s account was verified in less than an hour, and nabbed nearly 23,000 followers in two hours.  Feminist sites, like Feministing, have called it a de facto 2016 declaration. Of course, Mrs. Clinton dipping her toes in the Twitter waters comes on the heels of new revelations of 'endemic' corruption at the State Department during her watch.  You wouldn't know, however, from Miller's...

'A TEXAS court has freed a man who murdered a prostitute, saying the shooting was JUSTIFIED because she took his money but refused to have sex with him. The jury accepted accused Ezekiel Gilbert’s claim that he was only trying to retrieve his own property when he blasted escort Lenora Ivie Frago in the neck on Christmas Eve 2009. The call girl — who Gilbert met on website Craigslist — was paralysed from the gunshot wound and died seven months later. Gilbert, 30, said he had never intended to kill the 23-year-old and was merely trying to stop her from...

A high-profile prostitution scandal featuring sex videos, adultery, exhibitionism and more than 100 clients drew to a close Friday when a Zumba fitness instructor who turned her studio into a brothel was sentenced to 10 months in jail. Alexis Wright was sentenced under a plea agreement to 20 counts including prostitution, conspiracy, tax evasion and theft by deception. Wright was originally charged with 106 counts. All the counts in the plea agreement were misdemeanors, including three counts relating to welfare and tax fraud that were reduced from felonies. Electronic evidence was plentiful because the two kept in touch via text,...

A Portland woman found naked and dead Monday in a Honolulu park was a traveling escort whose ads appeared in online publications across the country. Ivanice "Ivy" Harris, 28, was in Hawaii last Thursday with friends Jillian Gibides and Mark Miles when she disappeared. Gibides, 31, told the local Star Advertiser newspaper reporter that Harris was a prostitute who was talking to a man outside a Waikiki bar early Thursday morning when she last saw her. The friends exchanged text messages about meeting up around 3:45 a.m., shortly after last call at Kelley O'Neil's bar, Gibides told a television reporter...

Berlusconi's Bunga-Bunga Strippers Dressed Up as Barack Obama, Says Bellydancer Ruby Silvio Berlusconi's infamous "bunga-bunga" parties featured strippers dressed as US President Obama as well as the more conventional fare of nuns and nurses, according to court testimony by the Moroccan woman at the centre of the scandal. Karima el-Mahroug, 20, was giving evidence at the trial of three former aides to Berlusconi who are accused of procuring her and other women for prostitution. El-Mahroug, a former bellydancer, said she attended about half a dozen parties, using her nickname Ruby. One each occasion, Berlusconi had handed her an envelope containing...

A 75-year-old resident of a New Jersey senior citizen housing complex is suspected of running a prostitution ring that employed some elderly residents as sex workers, NBC 4 New York has learned.

A newlywed husband solicited sex from a prostitute while on his honeymoon with his new wife, authorities say. Mohammed Ahmed, 21, allegedly left his blushing bride in their luxury suite so he could meet up with the hooker he'd spotted online — but she turned out to be an undercover cop. Ahmed was busted — alongside 92 other alleged johns, pimps and hookers — as part of the Polk County Sheriff's Office sting.

An Irving high school student drugged a 15-year-old classmate for several days and forced her to have sex with men who gave him drugs and money in exchange, police said Tuesday. Nimitz High School student Travis Lekas, 17, is also accused of trying to recruit other students from Nimitz and Bowie Middle School to engage in prostitution. Police said they are working to determine whether Lekas had other victims. Lekas, who was arrested at his home Monday, faces one count of human trafficking of a minor, one count of compelling prostitution and one count of sexual performance by a child....

Representative Barbara Lee (D-Calif) warns that global warming will lead to an increase in sex-for-pay. As Lees sees it, higher temperatures will force women to wear skimpier clothing in an effort to endure the heat. More scantily clad women will induce more men to approach them with indecent propositions. The persistence of horny men and the lure of easy cash will be irresistible. Lee admitted that she wasn’t sure what could be done to avert this calamity, but thought that “we ought to be looking at possible options. Do we enforce a stricter dress code like some religions do? Do...

Federal prosecutors have charged 13 people in a sex slave ring they say forced young Mexican women into prostitution in New York and New Jersey. The authorities say some of the women were delivered to farms in New Jersey, where each would have sex with up to 25 farm workers a day. They say others worked in brothels located in dingy apartments in poor neighborhoods. …