New York is becoming worse than Louisiana," was Reverend Sharpton's comment in Staten Island yesterday, where a black man was beaten by two white men who muttered racial epithets before the assault. "We're going to Staten Island, Jena, Washington—and we're going to bring out numbers like you've never seen before." Yoohoo, Reverend Alfred Charles? Not a camera in sight down there now; maybe you could take those "numbers" down to the Lower Ninth Ward, maybe tidy up a little while no one's looking? [Newsday]

Whenever two adults in New York exchange sex for money, each commits a Class B misdemeanor. So one might think it would be difficult to procure a sex worker. It takes about three minutes. The website of one local spot is your basic HTML slapdash job. It says that "they" would like to be with you very much and uses lots of exclamation points. There's a gallery of women, young and mostly blond and carelessly dressed. Most of the women look like they could be in The Bangles, a bit more on the side of Debbi Peterson than Susanna Hoffs.