oh right! I forgot! Saw it in a movie: Madames are high class ladies and pimps are black dudes with big fuzzy hats! Ah, words and how we use them to delude ourselves.

An illegal peddler of flesh who takes advantage of desperation smells just as rotting if you call them a madame or a pimp.

It sounds like you need to do more research. If madams were pimps, they wouldn't be called madams. Go interview some people who self-identify as one or the other and see if you

It sounds like you need to do more research. If madams were pimps, they wouldn't be called madams. Go interview some people who self-identify as one or the other and see if you still stick by your statement.

She chose to kill herself (and make her elderly mother find her!) rather than admit to herself what she'd done. THAT is prostitution: shame, lack of self love.

Most prosititues do it because they need cash fast and you can't really be fired for coming to work strung out on drugs.

The prostitution laws make less sense the more one looks at them. First, as previously mentioned, they make illegal consensual sexual activity between adults, which should not be the concern of the government.

Next, there is the oddity that sex is only illegal if one party is paid for it. If both partners are paid by a third party who records it and sells it all over the world, that's legal. If two people just record themselves having sex and put it on the internet where people pay to see it, that's legal. If people who are married have sex with people not their partner, that's legal. In fact there are lots of internet dating services that make money helping these people find each other. Despite the fact that none of these activities has brought American society to its knees, we continue to make it illegal for one person to pay another for sex, without any evidence that this type of sex is any more dangerous to society than the others.

Then there is the issue, also raised by others here, that the prostitution laws make it open season on a group of women by labeling them as "bad" and "marginal" people. So the police take advantage of them (as seen in the recent Chicago street worker study), crazy guys feel empowered to beat up or kill them, the police fail to protect them as they would other citizens and prosecutors, as in the Palfrey case, feel free to obtain convictions with 55 years of penalties and thus drive a woman who hasn't hurt anyone to kill herself. Drug dealers are treated better.

Melissa Farley's "study" in NV has been thoroughly discredited by many academics. But even if you believe her conclusions, the answer would not be to keep prostitution illegal. If sexual abuse leads to prostitution, arresting the victims is hardly a solution. Moving all the money spent chasing prostitutes to stopping sexual abuse would make more sense. If you think economic conditions force women into prostitution, the solution isn't to arrest them, but to use that money to create more better paying jobs. And the CDC, which estimates that there are hundreds of thousands of prostitutes in the US, has repeatedly found that they are less likely to spread STD than people engaged in casual dating.

Decriminalization of prostitution is the only rational public policy approach.

Anyone who works with their hands and bodies for a living is being 'exploited' by their boss.

Capitalist law says that if you are a steel worker or farm worker, and you wear out your back or hands etc., that is OK.

Capitalist law in the U.S. also says that you cannot hire a woman or man's parts for sexual labor, and your 'boss', the pimp, is illegal.

The only issue here is legality, not physical exploitation. Prostitutes are the same as anyone who works physically. Dancers, waitresses, you name it. So quit joying in the hangin of this woman.

Just as the news of this woman's purported suicide hit the wire, I also heard that Cheney was one of her clients!?! And I see today in an 'editor's top choice' letter that there is also a connection between her and the 9-11 conspiracy.

This all makes at least as much sense as buildings in Manhattan falling directly into their thirty story basements and burning hot as iron smelters for a couple months (in an oxygen starved and water flooded environment no less!).

I wouldn't question 9-11 if I hadn't been exposed to the devil's 'physics' classes where I was forced to learn about such dubious claims as the 'theory' of gravity and the 'rules' of combustion. Activist Christians, with the support of the Preznit and Ben Stein, are doing their best to change that. See ExpelledExposed.com

"How stupid can you be?" is not a rhetorical question when applied to these "Discovery Institute" types anymore than "How criminal can you be?" when referring to Bush, Cheney and the entire cabal of self-admitted torture enthusiasts.

Many people are saying:

"Cheney could have cut off Ms. Palfrey's head on live TV, and the media would tell us her death was the result of Islamic terrorists in Antartica. By then, Bush would already be bombing the penquins."

Normally I wouldn't worry, but with a lame duck, religious hypocrite dill-hole at the helm, he might go nuclear on those Godless Islamic (some of whom are GAY BTW!!) Penguin bastards. Dude is crazy enough to melt the polar icecaps and flood half the world to save us from the evil menace of penguin domination.

He doesn't care. He lives high on a hill with all his well-healed buddies. Where do you live?

Let's see who else was on Ms Palfrey's list.

Enjoy.

...I occasionally watch an episode of Cathouse on HBO, I believe this is a *reality show* set in a legal whorehouse. It looks like a wonderful, exciting, fun way to make a living! It looks like one big sex toy/lingerie party, giggling with all your girlfriends, telling funny stories, just hangin' out. The clients who come calling are all respectful, well behaved, and extremely grateful for the privilege of handing over money and choosing one of these blushing beauties. The johns aren't good looking in any way, but not absolutely disgusting. The episode I saw explored how one favored regular and his whore spent a lot of time looking for her G-spot. How thoughtful! Oh, yeah, the girls make lots of money too, in addition to having fun fun fun all day and night!

I can hardly blame some young woman slaving away in McDonald's or Walmart watching this and thinking, hmmm, looks like fun, look at all the money they make, maybe I should give it a try for a year or two. Just until I save enough to put myself through college.

Thanks, HBO! Thanks for pointing the way!