After Craigslist pulled down its "adult services" section, it was only a matter of time before attorneys general targeted Backpage.com. Time's up.
Missouri AG Chris Koster and Kansas AG Steve Six joined 19 attorneys general in a letter to backpage.com yesterday, calling for the classified-ads website to end its "adult services" advertisements.
The Pitch's parent
company, Village Voice Media Holdings, owns Backpage.com, and yesterday, Backpage.com declined the AG's request in a blog post response, claiming the attorneys general were attempting to "capitalize on political opportunity during the election season."
Here's an excerpt from Backpage's response:
Backpage.com is disappointed that the AGs have determined toThe AGs' letter came a few days aftershift
blame from criminal predators to a legal business operator in an
apparent attempt to capitalize on political opportunity during the
election season.
The Internet was born. The federal governmentenacted laws to
regulate its use and to allocate responsibilities and immunities to web
operators. Backpage.com follows those laws and it declines to censor an
entire section of free speech from its website.
Censorship will not create public safety nor will it rid the worldof exploitation.
an attorney filed a lawsuit against
Backpage.com, claiming the website is a "safe house" for pimps and
knowingly allowed Latasha Jewell McFarland to pimp out a
14-year-old girl on the website. McFarland pleaded guilty earlier this
month and she's looking at five years in prison.
VVM attorney Steve Suskin says the lawsuit is "riddled with
errors," and that the company actually helped law enforcement track
down McFarland after finding out she had violated the site's terms of
use.
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"Johnsonite" is absolutely right.
Schmidt also pushed not only "Jessica's Law," at the behest of for-profit prison corporations, but draconian laws for the registration of sex offenders. Failure to register simultaneously in all three counties, if a person hypothically worked in Johnson, lived in Wyandotte, and went to school in a Douglas, could result in a decades-long sentence in prison.
Schmidt's corporate sponsors said they'd be delighted to built a prison for such miscreants.
So what sort of "offense" can one be convicted of in Kansas to force one to register as a "sex offender?"
Try adultery, for starters.
Well, I haven't seen "Backpage" and only have looked at Craig's List a couple of times for auto parts, but I've got a mixed opinion on sex ads. I don't think prostititution should be illegal and what's between two consenting adults should be legal as well.
As far as electioneering, though, Derek Schmidt just had a push poll done in his behalf. It featured lies about Steve Six, such as an allegation that he did nothing to block state Supreme Court appointments that he had no jurisdiction over anyway.
It also mentioned that Six did not waste Kansas taxpayers money on opposing what they called "Obamacare." A lot of fairly backward states have joined such a suit. It's almost certainly a loser, but even if it won, Kansas would be affected at no cost to us here.
Schmidt is famous for taking big bucks from the for-profit prison industry, trying to repeal the state law that keeps these dangerous facilities out of our neighborhoods and protects our property tax values. He steered a great deal of contributions to other legislators which helped him become Majority Leader as well.
I hope Six makes an issue of that!
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