Jeez, I've heard so much about what the Tech administration should or did or didn't do...you'd think they, not the gunman, killed 33 people. Newsflash: putting a campus on lockdown typically requires sending the students to their dorms. Sending students back to dorms would have seemed more dangerous than keeping them in classrooms...after all, a dorm is where the first shooting took place. The first shooting was also at a time when people were arriving on campus and were moving between places. Contacting, let alone controlling, that number of people is no small task. Finally, most people would have figured that if a gunman was going on a shooting spree he'd have done it the first time.

Let's keep the focus on understanding how and why the shooter acted and keep the second guessing to a minimum, at least until more info comes in.

think again. I deeply regret looking up the term "dirty sanchez".

Dobson claims that Mary Cheney's pregnancy is a mistake because the traditional married man/woman arrangement is optimal for children. Even if it were true, what the hell does that mean for Mary Cheney? Was she supposed to magically turn straight and marry a man? Is the baby's future so horrible that he/she would be better off not being born at all? Should Mary Cheney give the baby up to a heterosexual couple?

Maybe people with high-school educations shouldn't have babies because children have so many benefits from being born to college-educated parents. Maybe klutzy people (me) shouldn't have children because children benefit from athletic, graceful parents (OK, I made that up, sorta like Dobson). Makes as much sense to me. If you aren't able to do it perfectly according to Dobson, don't do it at all.

I think Dobson would find fault with my housekeeping, so I'm going to stop all cleaning and cooking.

but one of my best friends is a single woman with two girls from China, and I have learned quite a bit from her. Every point I can make has been made before so I'll be brief:

Adoptive parents have to go through an adoption agency that is approved and there are many hurdles to jump through. You DON'T just waltz into the country and pick up a baby if the mood strikes you.

Girls are adopted because they are available. A few boys are given up if they have a disability (and I understand they do get adopted out).

As for those who think we should adopt locally first: A baby is a baby. Are Chinese babies less deserving than American babies? Furthermore, the Chinese babies usually spend significant portions of the childhood in orphanages, which vary in quality and are usually crowded. When my friend got her oldest daughter seven years ago, she was 11 months old and from the pix, she looked about 4 months old and was clearly developmentally behind (she's fine now). I don't think American babies have it quite so bad.

According to my friend, there are not so many babies up for adoption right now because the economy is doing OK. When there is a downturn in the Chinese economy, the babies will be given up at higher rates again. We'll see about those new rules then.

China has every right to place restrictions on potential adoptive parents, but we can be forgiven for expecting those restrictions to be of a nature that will benefit the children, not make China feel better about itself. My friend is a great mother who decided to make the lives of two children better...perhaps immeasurably better...than to artifically inseminate or to marry someone she didn't love so she could have a baby the traditional way. Talking about someone like her as though she was a spoiled yuppie bothers me.

NNG, by any chance did you type some of those preceeding posts with one hand?

Anon is obviously experiencing impaired reality testing with attendant paranoia and cannot be expected to hold up an end of a discussion, y'all.

On a different note,,,How does having one threesome at one point in a person's life make him or her a slut? I thought that required a much more extensive resume. And I think it's abundantly obvious that many women had a lot of fun early on and yet married happily when they were ready. If that's not your type of woman, so be it.

This relationship doesn't look like all that when viewed from my end. The LW didn't feel he could tell her what he did for a living for TWO YEARS? Y'know, people get married and have a baby within two years. And she snooped through his stuff looking for signs that he'd been unfaithful? That would be a deal-breaker for most people, I think (I hope). So he finally told her and that's supposed to fix anything? Somehow I don't see that reuniting would bring all snooping behavior to an end.

I don't think the LW overreacted to the search of cellphone/house by breaking up with her. I think that was possibly the most sane thing he describes doing. It's not like this relationship is based on those pesky things like mutual respect and trust or anything. And if those things are present after two years, I suspect Santa's not bringing them on his sleigh.

It does seem a good idea to bring the dealing to an end though. I suspect that sooner or later, a source or buyer gets caught and sings like a canary about you.