Collecting

Sen. Rand Paul is recruiting plaintiffs - and seeking donations - for a class-action lawsuit against the National Security Agency. “Dear Patriot,” the Kentucky Republican wrote Thursday in an e-mail to supporters. “I'm looking for ten million Americans to stand with me and sue the federal government and TAKE BACK our rights. “Can I count on your help? “Without it, I truly fear where our fragile Republic could be headed …” Paul, who is expected to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, told a Fox News interviewer this week that he would be asking Internet providers and telephone companies to join him in a lawsuit against the electronic eavesdropping agency based at Fort Meade.

Baltimore and Harford counties have struck a deal on trash collection they say will benefit taxpayers in both places. Beginning next year, a Baltimore County contractor will take Harford County paper, plastic and other recyclables to a single-stream recycling facility in Cockeysville, which could generate $60,000 a month for Baltimore County. And in 2016, Harford County trash collectors will deliver garbage to Baltimore County's Eastern Sanitary Landfill near White Marsh, where it will then be shipped to an out-of-state landfill.

Gail Householder writes on July 6th that "forcing state employees to pay union dues ... (is) unconstitutional. " Ms. Householder needed to check her facts: while she may disagree with the decision, the Supreme Court has upheld the right of unions to collect fees from nonmembers and gives quite valid reasons for doing so. One of those reasons has to do with the union representing all employees during collective bargaining procedures. In other words, those non union members end up benefiting from the union's actions and, therefore, can be required to contribute financially to the union since the majority of the employees selected that union to represent them.

Police departments around the country are collecting DNA in largely unregulated databases, The New York Times reported today, providing a broader look at a practice The Baltimore Sun revealed in Maryland earlier this year. The largest collections of DNA records are held at the state and federal levels, but local agencies are also free to collect their own samples and keep their own records, which are not always subject to the same rules. New York City, for example, has a database of 11,000 suspects and Orange County, Calif., has 90,000 records on file, according to the Times . Baltimore police had samples from more than 2,000 suspects and more than 3,000 homicide victims, The Sun reported in February .  The state's DNA law, which allows the collection of DNA from people arrested in connection with serious crimes and was recently upheld by the Supreme Court , makes no reference to the local databases.

Would-be travelers received a New Year's bonus yesterday when several more airlines stopped collecting a federal excise tax, slashing the cost of domestic air tickets by 10 percent at a time when some prices were already lower because of a winter fare war.But travel industry officials urged people to move quickly to take advantage of the savings, since Congress is expected to reinstate the tax, which expired on New Year's Eve. The tax, along with a $6...

Uncle Sam has gotten much better at collecting the taxes we owe. But better isn't good enough, says a General Accounting Office report.The IRS pulled in about $1 trillion in 1989. But as of Sept. 30, 1990, taxpayers still owed about $72.2 billion, plus an additional $24 billion in interest and penalties.In 1983, the IRS introduced an automated collection system, which uses phones and computers to settle claims. It replaced a manual system that depended on written notices.The system worked so well that 21 ACS centers now do the work of 73 manual offices with half as many people.

Dear Mr. Azrael: Twenty-five years ago, I inherited six ground rents and wish I hadn't. I billed the people two weeks prior to the due date of the rent and the checks would come in with no trouble. Now I am experiencing huge problems collecting these rents. It seems houses are being sold without informing the owner of the ground rent. I recently was able to trace a rent to the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Huntington Beach, Calif. Last December, I sent three bills to a real estate firm.

Jacqueline Lanier, who spent a lifetime gathering African-American artifacts and collectibles she displayed and exhibited to schoolchildren, died of a respiratory ailment Wednesday at her Walbrook Junction home. She was 55. Born Jacqueline Ruth Lanier in Roxbury, Mass., she moved to Baltimore in 1954 and was a 1965 graduate of Carver Vocational-Technical High School. As a teen, she taught dance at Lafayette Courts Recreation Center and was an assistant coach of synchronized swimming at the Chick Webb Recreation Center in East Baltimore.

The most successful collectors aren't trendy. They seek no approval except their own and keep quiet about what they're buying to have the field all to themselves. Then, a decade ormore later, when they show off their accumulated treasures, latecomers gaze enviously. "Why didn't I think of collecting that way back when it was cheap and plentiful?" is the common refrain.One trick to building a collection that can be savored privately, exhibited publicly or, if you're lucky, sold for a handsome profit, is to find a neglected field.

TIFFANY REINHARDT, 17, a senior at Liberty High School, was like many Americans who watched the tragic events of Sept. 11 unfold, and through their shock and sorrow, felt the need to help in any way they could. That evening, Tiffany sat with her parents, Rodney and Sharon Harrison, and sister Ashley Harrison, 10. As the television replayed the devastation of the World Trade Center towers' collapses in New York, and the images of the crash sites at the Pentagon and Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, the family planned a way to help.

Spring has come, warm weather is final here. That can only mean one thing: Graduation season is upon us. This year my daughter Divina St. Peter is one of thousands of American students successfully graduating from high school. Divina began her educational endeavor at Laurel Elementary School, and soon after continued at Dwight Eisenhower Middle School. On June 3, 2013, she became a member of the Laurel High School Class of 2013. Her success was in no small measure a collaborative effort by her outstanding teachers from all of the above mentioned local schools.

It may be hard to picture, but it's possible for us to have clean waterways in the Baltimore region. Imagine a Herring Run safe for kids and dogs to play in, a healthy Gwynns Falls, or an Inner Harbor that is no longer hazardous but is actually suitable for swimming and fishing. Clean waterways generate enormous benefits. It's not just more aesthetically appealing to live near streams and harbors that aren't polluted. It's healthier and safer, and we know that vibrant natural resources (think Patterson Park)

Mei Xu, the Marylander behind the White House-approved Chesapeake Bay Candle, has unveiled a new collection of candles and diffusers, Alassis. The line, which features hand-blown artisanal candles, ranges in price from $3.95 for tin candles to $29.95 for reed diffusers and glass candles. There are eight scents, including honeysuckle and lily, black currant and rosewood, and amber and vanilla. The company promotes the entire collection as "conceptualized, designed and poured in Maryland.

David Simon, the former Baltimore Sun crime reporter and creator of television show "The Wire," has weighed in reports of data collection efforts by the National Security Agency, asking, what's the fuss? In a post on his blog, Simon compares the NSA's counterterrorism efforts to a Baltimore Police Department investigation in the 1980s that formed the basis for the first season of his television show. Police thought that drug traffickers were using payphones and pagers to carry out their business, and rather than develop particular suspects, detectives planned to gather information on calls made using public phones in the city.

A report late Wednesday that a top-secret court authorized the National Security Agency to collect the telephone records of millions of Verizon customers should raise serious concerns about the scope of the Obama administration's domestic surveillance program and the threat it poses to citizens' privacy. The fact that the government can secretly order communications firms to turn over massive amounts of potentially sensitive information about customers without their knowledge calls into question the administration's commitment to transparency and the ability of the special court charged with overseeing such requests to protect citizens' rights.

Privacy advocates expressed outrage Thursday over revelations that the National Security Agency has been collecting telephone records of virtually every phone call made in the United States for seven years, but the Obama administration and a bipartisan group of lawmakers defended the program as both legal and necessary. Top House and Senate lawmakers who oversee the NSA, which has its headquarters at Fort Meade, said they had been briefed regularly on the domestic surveillance operation and dismissed concerns that the collection of phone logs was overly intrusive.

Sam Cooperman has run his family business for 15 years. Now, instead of spending more time on selling doors, windows and skylights, the Baltimore building supplier has to worry about bill collecting."

Nine hundred twenty three thousand, nine hundred twenty three thousand one, nine hundred twenty three thousand two . . . nine hundred twenty three thousand fifty three."

The Supreme Court's decision today to uphold Maryland's law allowing the collection of DNA samples from people arrested for serious crimes upholds the interests of justice, the Constitution and common sense. Concerns that the DNA samples could violate suspects' privacy were unfounded, the practice of taking the samples is less intrusive than other searches authorized under the Fourth Amendment, and the direct result of a ruling against the law would have been the possibility that a known rapist would be released onto the street.

A Defense Science Board report made public last week contained shocking allegations about the extent of Chinese military hacking of American defense technologies. Though China's government denies it - huffily insisting that it has no need for American military technology - the report disclosed that Chinese cyberattacks had yielded data from dozens of weapons systems, including missile defenses and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. That comes on top of reports that Chinese hackers had successfully infiltrated the computer systems of a wide variety of U.S. corporations, think tanks and media outlets.