If it helps you feel less cynical, Chris Pratt has been showing up at Children's for a while, with little fanfare. A friend of mine is a peds nurse there and has met him while he was visiting sick & hurt kids. Some Seahawks players regularly show up too - I'm surprised she gets any work done with all the hotness going…

Absolutely.

Arkansas requires 30 hours of training. I'm not saying that 30 hours of training is adequate or effective. My point is that these parents knew they had to jump through these hoops in order to be allowed to adopt these kids,but ignored those requirements when looking for new parents of these kids.

These girls would have been better off if he'd just dropped them off at the nearest DCFS office and told them "if you don't take the kids back I'm going to give them away to strangers."

Yes, absolutely. Parents do place their kids with friends or family for a variety of reasons (moving out of state but want kid to finish the school year, servicemember parent being deployed, parent going to prison, etc.). I don't know how you criminalize one situation and not the others. But this situation - giving…

That seems to be the case with the Christian families "rehoming" their internationally adopted children featured in the Reuters story from last year. But these people adopted from the state, and in order to do so, were specifically screened and trained by the state as foster parents to have these girls placed into…

I never knew it until today but, yes, I've always wanted to be an anonymous source.

Same on the West Coast - my grampa grew up diving for abalone and oysters to help feed his family, because that food was free.

I love that movie - what a great story.

I always said my dream categories would be "killer animals" and "murder potpourri." I know a lot about murder from when I was an obsessive kid.

I also had an obsession with sharks and spiders - all animals that could kill me, really - and Great Mysteries, Disasters and Murders of History. I could recite facts about Titanic, the Andrea Doria, Lizzie Borden, etc. Those obsessions have served me well at pub trivia.

Not to downplay the seriousness of the crime (which I am about to downplay) but has this guy ever been to a bed-and-breakfast? A B&B is the worst place to hide out. Bathroom in the hallway! Communal breakfast served in the dining room! Forced-March tours of the historic minutiae of the house and its connection to…

I can cite so many examples of this, but my favorite was the male attorney who asks me to fix the copy machine when it jams. It took me years to finally come up with the proper response, "Ray, I went to the same law school as you, and they still don't offer any office equipment repair classes."

I had almost the exact same exchange with Catherine O'Hara. She was so nice.

I can allay your fears! I live a few blocks from Seattle's premier pot shop, Uncle Ike's. They sell regular pot (called "flower") as well as liquids for vaporizers and edibles. Edibles are required by law to have defined, tested dosages and must be labelled and packaged in a way that they won't be mistaken for…

Showing up at a resort for a much-needed vacation and seeing a bus load of young people sporting shirts with Greek letters on checking in = my nightmare. I would "get off my damn lawn" all over that shit.

The dark bit at the waist is the only thing about this dress that doesn't work for me. I can imagine the designer cutting the fabric this way in order to hide the black belt, but I think the belt against more of the whit3 background with color splashes would have worked better.

I love that those two are besties. Wouldn't that be the most fun as a teenager, to work with your best friend and then get dressed up and go to parties?

I took my waist length bone-straight hair to a professional for my 1990 spiral perm. She checked it at 45 minutes, and hour, 1 1/2 hours. . . and the curl would not set. Finally, after nearly 3 hours, I walked out with a gorgeous head of mermaid curls. Lasted all of three weeks until my hair started breaking off in…

I'm with you.