NO PLACE LIKE HOME

NO PLACE LIKE HOME
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Do they even know their names? Do they respond to Kiara and Keyara, the names a California couple gave them after paying $6,000 to an Internet adoption broker for the 9-month old twin girls from St. Louis? Or do their eyes light up when someone calls them Belinda and Kimberley, the names picked by the Welsh couple who bought them next for $12,000?
When British Justice Andrew Kirkwood ruled Monday that the so-called Internet twins would be placed in foster care in Missouri, he wrote the most recent chapter in a horror story about adoption.
The twins were born in June to Tranda Wecker in Richmond Heights shortly after she separated from their father, Aaron Wecker. Since then the twins have moved from their birth mother to a San Bernardino, Calif., couple, to another couple in Wales, and then to a British foster home before Monday's ruling to send them back to the United States.
Licensing: The case is bizarre, but it does point out the need to tighten up the American adoption process, especially when brokers are involved. Out of 46 states that allow adoption brokers -- including Missouri -- only California requires licensing.
At this critical developmental stage, the little girls should be learning life's earliest lessons about trust and security. About how to bond with loved ones. Instead, they are learning to fall asleep in strange beds and wake up to strange voices.
The case will soon be in the hands of St. Louis Circuit Judge Steven Ohmer. What happens next is complicated. Pending before him is the Weckers' divorce, in which both birth parents make a case for why they should get the babies.
Judith and Alan Kilshaw of Wales are considering an appeal. Vickie and Richard Allen of San Bernardino said they, too, might still try to win custody. The Kilshaws and Allens should not hold up the process. And the Weckers should be fully prepared to show why they deserve another chance after making a series of bad decisions. The court must act swiftly in the best interest of the children, to get the twins placed in a stable and permanent home -- with parents who will love them and nurture them -- and shield them from the public eye.
COSMIC FENDER BENDER
Philadelphia Inquirer: The universe began with a Big Bang. Or God said, "Let there be light" and there was light.
Nice, the way science and religion paired off with those alternative explanations for the origin of life as we know it. You could believe one, or the other, or -- as many do -- see the same truth in both. The Big Bang directed by a Conductor waving a wand toward the percussion section? No problem for many of the faithful to imagine that.
But now the earth moves under our feet; we feel the sky tumbling down. The 50-year-plus Big Bang theory is on shaky ground after being challenged by a credible new notion that could be called the Cosmic Collision theory.
'Fifth dimension' Scientists from Princeton and Cambridge universities and the University of Pennsylvania suggest that, in the fender bender of all time (heck, the fender bender that began time) two parallel universes separated by a "fifth dimension" collided with each other.
The impact itself caused a great explosion, producing the energy and matter that eventually led, among other things, to the Milky Way, Earth and a sublime array of beings ranging from Martha Stewart to scientists with brains that must be literally aching from all that theorizing.
There was still a big bang, the new theory posits, but it did not begin with a single point of origin as long believed, but instead erupted from this cosmic crash.
For most mortals, news of a new theory of creation should not be disturbing. Indeed, it is reassuring evidence that science marches forward even at the expense of discarded pet theories.
Are the Big Bangers upset? Quite the contrary. They are excited to have a new theory to work through on dueling blackboards. "I am absolutely thrilled," said one.
Also happy may be those Creationists who cite any disagreement among scientists or any lapse in a scientific model as proof that only one explanation for the universe -- the literal interpretation of Genesis -- can be true.
But take a good look as these scientists react with delight, not panicky defensiveness, to a challenge of the accepted wisdom. It suggests (doesn't it?) that science is more supple, more humble -- and more fond of mystery than either its sour religious critics or its more hubristic advocates ever concede.