Free Republic

After California’s then-Attorney General Kamala D. Harris announced felony pimping charges last year against the two owners of Backpage.com — a classified-ad website that is a hub for sex trafficking and prostitution, one of the men cut a $10,000 check to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s super PAC. Mrs. Pelosi’s political action committee, House Majority PAC, has resisted giving the money back, and an aide to Mrs. Pelosi said the California Democrat knows nothing about the contribution. The uproar over sexual harassment that began with the Harvey Weinstein scandal has intensified the scrutiny of political contributions linked to Backpage, which...

Democratic politicians who received funds from Backpage.com's owners have been donating the money to charityHillary Clinton's campaign appears not to have returned or donated to charity the more than $5,000 in contributions from the former co-owner of a website linked to underage prostitution and whose donations have backed a number of current and former Democratic politicians into a corner.Controversy surrounding donations from the owners of Backpage.com, an online classified website that has come under fire from politicians including Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.), has forced a number of politicians—particularly in the state of Arizona—to return or donate the tainted contributions.Jim...

Coming to a street corner near you: The chanting and ranting, the high-pitched screaming going to be heard on D.C. streets during inauguration are, like Rosie O’Donnell’s, Michael Moore’s, and other entertainment celebrities’ paid acts. O’Donnell and Moore get paid plenty by people who just don’t want to be titillated and entertained but by those who naively believe they represent their personal political beliefs, and by the publicity needed to keep their television shows and ‘shockumentaries’ afloat.

Meranda Warborg was arrested this week. The 29-year-old Minneapolis woman was charged with prostituting two young girls, 15 and 17 years of age, who ran away from their homes in Eau Claire, Wiscconsin. The girls told police that Warborg kept them drugged up with, variously, cocaine, crystal meth, heroin and ecstasy. She also assigned them a bedroom where they provided sex for pay to dirty old men. Police tracked down Warborg through a cell phone number accompanying an online advertisement she posted on Backpage.com – but of course – featuring her under-aged lingerie-clad call girls in suggestive poses. Against that...

Hello, My name is Chase! New, hot, & ready to forfill [sic] all of your wildest dreams. Weighing 115 and standing at 5’4” with the complete package to take you to ecstacy [sic] ! ! ! In call starting at $80. Out call starting at $100. Poster's age: 19. That’s an actual sex ad posted today in the Seattle listings of Backpage.com, a website that boasts a 70 percent market share of the nation’s prostitution ads according to AIM Group, the leading research and consulting service for the classifieds industry. The owners of Backpage.com, Village Voice Media, are determined to...

Undercover detectives in Nashville, Tenn. responded to an advertisement in the adult section of Backpage.com, a website owned and operated by Village Voice Media. They posed as customers and arranged a hook-up at a local hotel. They arrived at a room where two under-age girls were awaiting, ready to perform sex acts for money. The girls weren’t turning tricks on their own. Their pimp, who recruited them from out of state, was waiting for them in the hotel parking lot, where the detectives arrested him on charges of trafficking for sexual servitude. The arrest in the Volunteer State was no...