"You know, I was sure this was the case, too. But when I returned to Wisconsin from Mexico last month, I waited and waited for my luggage at the carousel, only to find it waiting for me at the baggage office, having come in on an earlier flight. So a rule's a rule, except when it's not?"

You got one example. If a passenger arrives in time for his flight, but in less than the stipulated security-clearance time before it, he's out of luck. And the 'flat tire exception' is a quaint relic of the days of airline chivalry. But the airline can cancel your flight whenever it wants to, so long as it claims "weather" as the cause. After all, rain in Chicago could be why your flight from sunny Phoenix to sunny San Francisco has not come in yet.

Airlines can say "crew you" in any language.

Young Roos- oops, I mean Obama - is already being 'tested' by the Islamists. I'm confident that, given the Cabinet he is assembling, that he will do what has to be done. As a Democrat, he will get a free pass from the media. Pass the popcorn!

"1. The terrorists are Islamists. Why not simply speculate that they are far-right-wing lunatic fringe US gun-nuts who share your presumptive racism?

2. "The "Deccan Mujahideen" have claimed responsibility, but is the group homegrown or linked to a wider international network?""

Our proof is that this group specifically sought out Americans and British when rounding up hostages, by checking passports. Oh, and this morning's big news is he slaughter at the Jewish Center. Why would a homegrown Hindu group be gunning for Jews?

"Do Muslim extremists really want that? Alienate a nation like India (twin-tower fashion) and tempting it to cooperate more closely with the US?"

India's in! Next time you call Tech Support for some product, wish them well ("Jai Hind!")

"I fear that these Fools - both the Muslim and Hindu ones - will just keep this crap up until they get what they THINK they want; some kind of 'purification' - by Nuclear Fire."

Fortunately for human civilization, India is further ahead in this technology than any part of the Muslim world.

"Each one of these guys AND their promotors should be renditioned to Gitmo and the waterboarded 8 times a day. At the end of 5 years they should be castrated while conscious."

And this time, it needs to be done on network TV. If PBS were to carry it, I would even start contributing to Public Television.

" Because the more the Indian Muslims are repressed -- the less chance they have to be treated and viewed as equal partners in Indian life -- then the more likely they will be to rise up against the Hindu majority, and the more likely they will be to become radicalized."

This calls for a solo performance on the world's smallest violin. Yes, Hindu and Muslim have been in conflict in India for centuries - coincidentally, since soon after Islam was founded. This was why when the British pulled out in 1947, they drew a line across the north of India and set up the new nation of Pakistan for the Muslims.

The post-colonial ideal was that all Hindu would move south of the boundary and all Muslims move north of it. But just as they did after the partition of Palestine, the Muslims impose absolute theocratic rule in the their designated territory while at the same time angrily demanding the part that isn't theirs. This will go on until modern technology comes up with ways of killing sufficiently impressive numbers of them that the remainder realize that owning the world is not necessarily what Allah had in mind.

"The palestine BELONGED to the muslims BEFORE 1948. It was the forcible partition of that country and settlement by British that led to current fiasco."

In colonial times, Palestine was an intertwined mix of Muslim and Jewish areas. The partition was an attempt to bring peace by isolating the Jews in their own country. As idealistic Europeans, the Jews believed that by setting up a Knesset with representation for all, the remaining Muslim population in Israel itself would live in peace.

We all know the outcome: after many unsuccessful attempts at taking over Israel by force, the "Palestinians" were given an independent state carved out of two swaths of Israeli territory. After trashing the infrastructure the Israelis left behind, they've been at war with themselves and with everyone around them since.

In the same way, the establishment of Pakistan was supposed to bring peace to India. But no: the Islamists want all of India for themselves, and those grinning-zombie gunmen more proof that they will stop at nothing to get it.

As we speak, similar insurgencies is spreading out from small colonies in Thailand and the Philippines, bombing and beheading its way through countries that have historically just wanted peace. Is China next?

"When talking about enduring images of horror, what can be worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki?"

Not wiping out Nazism would have, of course, been infinitely worse. Because the civilized nations of the world took the trouble to do that, and because American neocons took on the task of building new, free countries out of the ashes of the Axis, those very cities are centers of high technology today.

Mumbai is a reminder that we are still at war today with a force akin to Nazism in its nihilistic barbarism. We need to exterminate it, as thoroughly as we did in WW II. We need to end it with a Nuremberg trial in the streets of Mecca, with the last jihadists hanged in public and a generation of children deprogrammed out of any inclination to terror. If Obama can accomplish these things, he will have his place in history beside Roosevelt.