This post repurposes recent Twitter/X reports from the #BackpageTrial, now near its close in Phoenix’s Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse. For regular updates, please follow the writer @stephenlemons. Friday, Oct. 27, 2023: Cambria at Bat This a.m. in the #BackpageTrial,…

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In a recent column, longtime Arizona Republic columnist E.J. Montini cited a 2021 report from the U.S. Governmental Accountability Office (GAO), which found that the 2018 takedown of Backpage had the opposite of its intended effect: it made it more…

Richard Blumenthal

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut combines the worst characteristics of Cotton Mather, Girolamo Savonarola and the Rev. Jerry Falwell — Senior, not Junior. The 76-year-old Democrat’s persistent, self-righteous efforts to censor the internet, using “the kids” as his rallying…

Cato the Younger

The libertarian, free speech zealots at the Cato Institute have more than once come to the defense of the now-defunct classified listings site, Backpage.com, and its former owners, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, who along with four former executives and…