If you have not yet seen this, here is the US State Department's latest notice on what is happening with the Hague, announcing that the President signed the "U.S. instrument of ratification of the Hague Adoption Convention" on the 16th of this month.

This puts everything in line for "deposit of the instrument of ratification" on the 12th of December.

The Department will announce the official date the Convention will go into force for the United States—projected to be April 1, 2008—in the Federal Register.

All rah-rah with loads of exclamation points (!!!), it seems the Department of State is going with the idea that the Hague will take care of all the issues of adoption, and do it in a just and fair manner that will satisfy everyone and put the needs of children at the top of all agendas.

Good luck with that.

Speaking of keeping people satisfied, some will never be, at least when it comes to milking the celebrity adoption camel and hoping there's a kick for someone somewhere.

With no lack of folks with nothing better to do and too few brain cells rubbing together to think of something, mass media munchers with a penchant for tabloid tastes have been happy as piggies in poop over the flim-flam that has been the Zahara Jolie Pitt birth mother blitz that has plopped out smelly nugget after smelly nugget of insinuation and rumor.

A few of the fringe loonies have trotted this out on their blogs, hoping to make some ta da! to do through a bit of exaggerated stretching and twisting that will cast adoption in a bad light and put an end to the practice altogether.

Unfortunately for them ... and we could have told them, couldn't we? ... that straw, like many grasped at so enthusiastically, was nothing but more manufactured malodorous air, as this report from the BBC goes along way toward proving.

Saying she is happy her daughter has found a home, the birth mother is quoted as saying, "I have never disputed the adoption. It was something I never said," and adds that her words had been "twisted by 'so-called journalists' who had told her they worked for Ms Jolie."

Would people stoop so low as to use a birth mother in attempts to trash adoption? Yep. You betcha.

Sticking with celebrities touched by adoption, there are a couple of different takes on Madonna's continuing involvement in her son's birth country.

Not impressed at all is the person who wrote this report for The Scotsman.

Quite impressed, according to Reuters, the Malawian government.

"What she is doing for orphans of this country very few super stars like her can do that, she has managed to put their plight on the world stage," government spokesperson and Information Minister Patricia Kaliati told Reuters.

"Madonna has built clinics in rural areas where government has failed to reach and because of that she has saved many lives of pregnant mothers who could have died," she said.