With a mixture of gallows humor and outright defiance, veteran newspapermen Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin captivated the 100-plus libertarians who gathered in Phoenix on Friday, March 8, for the Reason Foundation’s annual Reason Weekend. Joining a panel at the…
There was Cindy Lou McCain inside the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix, draped over her husband’s casket. Her coifed head, a mother-of-pearl orb, rested, momentarily, upon the weeping box’s lid. My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar. The…
The FBI agent put a gun on me. He wore a flak jacket more appropriate to a raid on a terrorist’s bomb factory than on my suburban Phoenix home. He stood at the glass door to my office on the…
Michael Lacey has spent his entire professional life in the newspaper business. With his business partner, Jim Larkin, Lacey cofounded Phoenix New Times during the Vietnam War. The two men would go on to build Village Voice Media, a chain of weeklies…
In an in-depth profile by Elizabeth Nolan Brown published this week on the website Reason.com, veteran newspaper publishers and former Backpage.com co-owners Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin spoke out candidly about their arrests on federal charges of money laundering, conspiracy,…
FOSTA/SESTA: What Is It? The Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) is federal legislation that establishes new civil and criminal liabilities for interactive websites regarding content that involves sex work. Signed into law by President Donald Trump at a April…
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a federal lawsuit on June 27 seeking to overturn FOSTA, a recently enacted federal law that makes it illegal to “facilitate” or “promote” prostitution online and expands civil and criminal liability for websites regarding sex…
Seated in a McDonald’s in Phoenix, picking at a burger and fries with long, nervous fingers, Raquel, a trans woman of 29, recounted the horror of street prostitution that has followed the demise of the online listings giant Backpage.com. “It’s…
You’re unlikely to find a photo online of U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill sporting a pussy hat (oh, how we tried!), but the Missouri Democrat, who’s seeking a third term, has done her best to harness the energy of the January…
Critics of H.R. 1865, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which passed the U.S. Senate 97 to 2 on March 21, warned that the bill’s broad language targeting online adult ads would have a devastating effect on freedom of…
