Alanis Morisette had it all wrong when she said rain on your wedding day was ironic; a better example might have been Dave Lieber’s becoming an identity theft victim … again.

You see, Lieber is The Watchdog, the identity theft columnist in the Star Telegram, the Dallas-Fort Worth newspaper. It seems he got a New Year Eve’s phone call from a woman at a collection agency who sternly urged him to pay up on the $279 bounced check he’d written at an area Wal-Mart in December.

Her demand would be fair enough if he’d actually written a bad check at Wal-Mart, but he’d never been to that Wal-Mart, doesn’t write checks at Wal-Mart and, presumably, can cover the checks he writes elsewhere.

It’s my personal opinion that there are a lot of reasons to dislike Wal-Mart, but Lieber’s are probably better than mine. After all, this is the second time they’ve accused him of being a deadbeat. The first time was 13 years ago when they refused to accept his check as payment for merchandise because of the bad checks he’d already written at Montgomery Ward and a toy store. They were wrong about him that time, too.

The thieves who used Lieber’s identity last month did so with synthesized checks that were probably printed with his name and address on a standard home computer. Yes, it’s that easy. Passing the check probably wasn’t very challenging either because Wal-Mart employees only perform random driver’s license checks.