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>> Montgomery County Police recently arrested a man who broke into a sprawling Bethesda mansion after claiming sovereignty over it. The Washington Post reports that Lamont Butler, 28, declared ownership over the house as a Moorish American National, an offshoot of an early-20th-century religion for African Americans that has been twisted to include sovereign claims over U.S. land.
>> The District hauled in the fines from red-light and speed cameras and through the first two months of 2013 and is on pace to collect $119 million this year, The Washington Examiner reports. The cameras collected $26 million in January and $21.3 million in February, $3.9 million more than in February 2012.
>> Maryland legislators have altered Gov. Martin O’Malley’s proposal to increase the state’s sales tax on gasoline, WAMU reports. The raises on the wholesale tax have been cut in half, from 2 percent this year to 1 percent and from 4 percent in 2015 to 2 percent, while the reduction in the excise tax has been canceled.
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