Read the whole article at The Record…

Fight mounts over ‘Flying Prostitute’ plane
by Bob Weber

The fate of a derelict Second World War bomber nicknamed “The Flying Prostitute” is uncertain after two Calgary brothers fished part of it out of a Yukon lake. The brothers want to complete the salvage and see the B-26 Marauder restored and placed in a museum. But the territorial government, suspecting a profit motive, has charged the pair under the Yukon’s heritage legislation.

“We want our heritage in the Yukon,” Jeff Hunston of the Heritage Resources Department said yesterday.

The B-26 was a medium-weight bomber developed by the United States and saw action in several theatres of the war. The plane’s nickname was from its short wingspan, which appeared to give it no visible means of support.

Many Marauders were part of a lend-lease program that helped arm Russia against the Nazi invasion. In a massive airlift called the Northwest Staging Route, about 7,000 warplanes were flown from Great Falls, Mont., to Fairbanks, Alaska, en route to Siberia. There were stops in Canada to refuel.

On Jan. 16, 1942, six of them left Great Falls. Three got lost in Yukon airspace and crashed after running out of fuel, said Bob Cameron, a Yukon aviation buff in Whitehorse. The fourth crash-landed on the ice of Watson Lake and another crashed on takeoff as it set out again. Only one made it to Fairbanks.

“That was an unlucky group of airplanes,” he said.

Enter history buffs Brian and John Jasman, who found one of the planes last year. This spring, the brothers floated the nose cone of the derelict up to the surface and hauled it to shore.

The Jasmans were starting their search for the rest of the plane when the territorial government stepped in.

Hunston fears the Watson Lake Marauder could wind up in an private American collection.

“We, too, want our warbird heritage preserved and exhibited in museums so that everybody benefits.”

The brothers have been served notice to appear in court and could face a fine of up to $50,000.

So, for now, the Marauder sits atop a trailer alongside the Watson Lake airport where it attempted to land 67 years ago.

You will probably enjoy this very well written and detailed history of how Rhode Island decriminalized prostitution at The Providence Journal…

Behind closed doors: How R.I. decriminalized prostitution
By Lynn Arditi

It’s been nearly 30 years since Rhode Island granted a green light to indoor prostitution.

Asian spas now offer “body rubs” just blocks from Providence City Hall, and Internet sex sites rate Rhode Island as a destination spot. On weekend nights, out-of-state cars vie for parking spaces outside storefronts with drawn shades and signs that read “Spa.”

To understand how Rhode Island became the only state in America to decriminalize prostitution, you have to go back to the mid-1970s, when a powerful politician and devout Roman Catholic named Matty Smith helped advance the cause of a former prostitute named Margo St. James.

Though few recall the details of this chapter in history, three decades later lawmakers are still coping with the consequences.

St. James, founder of the sex workers’ rights group COYOTE (Call Off Your Old, Tired Ethics), was traveling the country and Europe to deliver her message about keeping government out of the sex business. During a stop in Rhode Island, she met the owner of a downtown Providence strip club. The police, he told her, were on his back for letting prostitutes hang out at his bar. He offered her a tour of his club. Then, he introduced her to his lawyer.

It was 1976 –– the year that The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality became a bestseller and Lorretta Lynn’s song “The Pill” climbed the pop charts –– when St. James’ group challenged the constitutionality of Rhode Island’s prostitution law. In a federal lawsuit, the group argued that the statute was so broad that it could prohibit sex between unmarried adults.

Back then, prostitution in Rhode Island was a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. Yet, despite well-publicized reports of prostitution going on in places such as the Civic View Inn, just down the street from the police station, only a handful of arrests there resulted in convictions, mostly involving small fines and probation.

In the city’s West End, residents complained that streetwalkers flagged down cars night and day, and their customers cruised the neighborhood with their windows down, soliciting wives on their way to work and girls waiting for the school bus.

The neighborhood had a powerful ally in Matthew J. “Matty” Smith, then speaker of the House of Representatives. Smith had built his power base by getting things done for his constituents. If a voter said a fallen tree had cracked the sidewalk, he’d call public works. A social conservative, he protested abortion with a lapel pin that depicted a fetus’s tiny feet. And he told a Journal reporter he was worried that Roger Williams Park, where his father had once mowed the grass, was becoming a hangout for gays. The West End was part of Smith’s district, and he called the prostitution there “sickening and despicable.”

BY 1979, as neighborhood groups pressed the police to step up patrols, the trial opened in the civil-rights lawsuit filed by St. James’ group. St. James flew from San Francisco to Rhode Island to testify before U.S. District Judge Raymond J. Pettine.

At issue was how much power the state should have to control the sexual activity of its citizens.

Read the entire article here.