Deaths put Focus on Pastor's Advocacy of Spanking

The Times story today, 11/7/11, speaks of three children who were killed, apparently by their parents, all of whom had this pastor's book (which advocates spanking) in their homes. But the details of the abuse the children suffered make it obvious that these parents are total loons and shouldn't have been allowed to have all the children at all (many of them were adopted or fostered). What government authority allows such people to have so many children (clearly natural births cannot be controlled, but adoption or fostering can and should be). According to the story, the pastor's book lays out all sorts of safeguards or at least does not recommend starving children for days or beating them regularly in the sadistic way these "readers" did. I think it's clear that the state is at fault here.