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Joe Faranda, Washington big-shot for a week

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My seventh grader son Joe is down in Washington DC from today until Friday. He was nominated by his school for the “Junior Congressional Youth Leadership Council” which does programs for junior high school students. We applied and he was accepted, so he is down with 230 other seventh graders “scholars” (their term, not ours) … Read more

Notre Dame – the university’s character v. academic freedom

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Here is an interesting posting on Amy Welborn’s weblog. She is a Catholic author and speaker whose webjournal has a big following.

This has to do with the ongoing debate at Notre Dame (and at most other Catholic Universities) over their "Catholic Identity" and academic freedom. I believe the most recent ruckus had to do with whether "the Vagina Monologues" should be shown on the ND campus.

If you want the complete treatment go to the links in Welborn’s posting – but it’s not really necessary – her excerpts cover the key points.open book: An ideal worth striving for

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The IRS and unpaid taxes

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the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, and Washington Post all had articles today on the IRS study about the amount of income they estimate they under-collect. Here’s the WaPo article  IRS Was Underpaid $345 Billion in ’01 If they could only catch up with those self-employed people…

Valentine’s Day – busiest day of year for Private Eyes

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[Note – since I posted this earlier today, the entire article is now available for free here:]

AOL Money & Finance: WSJ – – One Tough Day for Two-Timers

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article in their Friday Relationships section entitled "One Tough Day for Two Timers". It seems private detective agencies are swamped with work that day. Here’s why:

"Valentine’s Day is the biggest single 24-hour period for florists, a huge event for greeting-card companies and a boon for candy makers. But it’s also a major crisis day for anyone who is having an affair. After all, Valentine’s Day is the one holiday when everyone is expected to do something romantic for their spouse or lover — and if someone has both, it’s a serious problem."

Here’s another couple of paragraphs from the article:

"Martin Investigative Services in Anaheim, Calif., has been booked up for Valentine’s Day assignments since the end of January. Founder Thomas Martin, a former agent of the U.S. Justice Department, says the firm, which charges $95 an hour, will handle 14 to 20 suspected infidelity cases that day, nearly double its usual load.

One of Mr. Martin’s Valentine’s Day clients is a doctor whose wife, also a doctor, aroused his suspicions when she told him she would be changing her regular daytime shift on Tuesday and instead working until 8 p.m. Like virtually all private detectives, Mr. Martin won’t reveal his client’s names. He says private eyes from the agency also will be following an attorney who told his wife he can’t have lunch with her on Valentine’s Day because he’ll be in court; the wife, also an attorney, knows that her husband always gets a lunch break in court."

You can’t make this stuff up! To read a last excerpt, the end of the article, click the link just below.

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