Free Republic

Adoptions not always the stuff of fairy tales By CHRISTI KILLIEN GUEST COLUMNIST It was the middle of a blazing Houston summer in 1970 when my parents decided to adopt a 3-year-old boy. They were both 37 years old and already had three children, two girls and a boy. I was the oldest, an adolescent with long blonde hair, skirts I rolled up short on the way to school and a pile of Glamour magazines in my room. Dad told us we would meet our new brother on a get-to-know-you outing at the Houston zoo. Fine, I remember thinking, but...

Return unused portion for refund. It’s the traditional safety net when a product fails to please or perform. But should returns be allowed for adopted children? The Tulsa World reports that parents Melissa and Tony Wescott want to return their 11 year-old adopted son to state custody because they say he had severe behavioral problems not disclosed prior to his 2007 adoption, including reactive detachment disorder, disruptive behavior disorder, major depressive disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, and fetal alcohol syndrome. The Wescotts say that soon after the adoption, the boy attacked a neighbor child with a board, killed and injured...

Do you remember "the speech"? You know, the one Barack Obama gave before the Democratic convention that nominated John Kerry for president. The one that brought him to national attention and first implanted the idea that he would make a good chief executive. That was the speech where he told the nation it was time for racial reconciliation. It was where he echoed Rodney King's plea that "we all just get along,"- only more eloquently. Here was an intelligent African-American. Here was someone we could trust. This compared favorably with the impressions left by other prominent blacks. Political figures such...

I’ve written a fair amount on parental alienation and parental alienation syndrome (PAS) or parental alienation disorder (PAD). I’ve said before that I’m in no way qualified to give an opinion about whether the behavioral changes displayed by an alienated child fit the American Psychiatric Association’s definition of a discrete syndrome or disorder. But what I do know is that certain parents attempt to alienate children from the other parent and that that effort can result in personality changes in the child. Now here’s an excellent overview of the matter that lay people like me can understand (The Colorado Lawyer,...

People are strange When you're a stranger Faces look ugly when you're alone Women seem wicked when you're unwanted. Streets are uneven, When you're down. -The Doors For much of my life, I felt like a Stranger in a Strange Land. This is not unusual. Look at the history of most leftists, and you'll find the very same thing. I grew up with a surname that wasn't my own. My father anglicized it years before I was born, trying to ward off the anti-Semitism that shadowed him. I grew up without God. My parents had no use for a God...

Honoring Thy FathersBRADFORD WILCOXFor millions of children across the U.S., this Sunday will not be a cause for celebration. Because of dramatic increases in divorce and nonmarital childbearing, about 28% of our nation's children -- more than 20 million kids -- now live in a household without their father, up from 10 million kids (14%) in 1970, according to a recent Census Bureau report. Moreover, because most of these boys and girls see their dads infrequently (once a month or less), Father's Day will offer cold comfort to many of these children.Our nation's epidemic of fatherlessness is just the most...

Kubrick's Psychopaths Society and Human Nature in the Films of Stanley Kubrick © 1990 by Gordon Banks Introduction To the creator of films as well as other forms of literature, the dark side of human nature has often proved more rich and interesting than the bright. Films and books on the lives of saints have not been as popular as murder mysteries and works of horror. While we may have no desire to experience them in our own lives, terrible deeds and evil people exert their perverse attraction on our psyches. We who consider ourselves moral and upright are...