Entries for April 12, 2007

As we reported in early January, Duke University saw a 20 percent dip in early-decision applications last fall, quite possibly in part due to the hurricane of negative media the school endured because of rape accusations made against three lacrosse players, who were acquitted Wednesday over a year after the accusations were made.

Whether that was the case or not, the total applicants only sank a hair, down to 19,170 for 2007 from 19,358 in for 2006. The admissions rate remaining steady at just under 20 percent.

There are two caveats to those steady figures, however. As we noted in January, a smaller number of those applicants applied early, which requires them to commit to the school ahead of time if accepted. The steady figures also buck a previous trend of healthy increases in the number of applicants each year:

Listen: Kurt Vonnegut has come unstuck in time.

The beloved American satirist died yesterday in New York at age 84 after decades of disgruntled amusement at his longevity. He was an enthusiastic smoker, a veteran of at least one suicide attempt, and the survivor--in a stroke of irony that only he could have penned--of severe smoke inhalation after his home caught fire in 2000.

Vonnegut is most famous for Slaughterhouse-Five, his careening novel about a World War II veteran, Billy Pilgrim, who (like Vonnegut himself) witnessed the aftermath of the firebombing of Dresden. The book, in which Pilgrim has become "unstuck in time," abruptly teleporting from one episode of his life to another, came to embody the ethos of Vonnegut's work, in which tragedy slips seamlessly into absurdity and, in the deranged world it leaves behind, grief is some funny stuff.

Over the past five years, the number of hours that Internal Revenue Service employees spend auditing corporations in which no extra tax was recommended has risen 40 percent, according to a new report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).

Using records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, TRAC has evaluated how much time the IRS spent auditing corporations in eight different brackets. Of those, the number of hours of auditing that bore no fruit increased the most in the highest category--those businesses pulling in $250 million or more a year, where "nonproductive" auditing hours rose 114 percent. It is these gargantuan businesses that tend to produce the most extra income for the Treasury.

"The forty percent (40%) increase in the number of corporate audit hours that bore no fruit is troubling primarily because the misdirection of the agency's enforcement resources ultimately could weaken the long-term interest of corporations in paying their taxes," the report states.

Associate Editor Angie C. Marek reports:

A coalition of seven U.S. senators has delivered a strongly worded letter to Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte urging him to address unresolved terrorism issues concerning Libya in a visit with Col. Muammar Qadhafi this week. Negroponte, the first U.S. ambassador to visit the country since 1953, is there primarily to discuss the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan.

"Libya must put past crimes behind it and settle these cases," said the letter, citing money still owed to the families of the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, as well as a reneged-upon proposed settlement with victims of the 1986 bombing of the LaBelle discothèque in Germany.

"Otherwise," the senators continued, "we believe that the State Department's request for a new embassy in Tripoli, its request for economic and military aid for Libya, and its yet unfilled ambassadorial post will be the subject of significant congressional concern."

They urged Negroponte "to send a strong message" to Qadhafi "that he must settle the remaining terrorism cases ... before he can have fully normalized diplomatic relations with the United States." Sen. Norm Coleman was the only Republican signer of the letter, which included signatures from Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chris Dodd. Some $2 million per family is still owed to the relatives of victims of the Pan Am attack.

Democrats:

• John Edwards speaks this evening at Florida Community College in Jacksonville.
• Chris Dodd makes three stops in Iowa, first meeting at the home of a Des Moines school board member and then making two stops in Ames to discuss education.
• Dennis Kucinich meets with the Iowa State Democratic Caucus and then also travels to Ames for an education convention.

Republicans:

• John McCain is in West Bloomfield, Mich., to addresses the Southeast Michigan Ronald Reagan Memorial Dinner.
• Ron Paul is in Ames, Iowa, to speak at Iowa State University.

This morning's top stories:

• Novelist Kurt Vonnegut, regarded by generations of readers as a key influence in shaping 20th-century American literature, died Wednesday in New York at age 84. Vonnegut's works contained elements of social commentary, science fiction, and autobiography.
• At least 35 militants were killed in a clash between Afghan security forces and suspected Taliban insurgents, ending with a subsequent airstrike, according to the Associated Press.
• Microsoft is disputing reports of flaws in Office software and security vulnerabilities in 2007 products and complaining about how alleged flaws were disclosed to various Web sites.
• Robert Bennett, the Republican chairman of the elections board in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, plans to resign days ahead of a hearing on his possible removal from the position.
• With tax day barreling toward Americans, LiveScience.com examines common ways that people cheat and how much it costs the Department of Treasury.