Scots do it once a day, English do it once a day and once more on Sundays. Is that a significant difference? Did it get misread as or miscopied from 8 times a day?

As the others have pointed out in the astronomy lessons, this is one of the most poorly written articles I can remember, as far as factual content, only rivaling Hollywood where no one expects accuracy.

Get a grip.

I don't think I have ever thought that Bush or Cheney or any other high muckity muck actually intentionally lied about the whole business. What I do believe is that those high muckity mucks had the goal of raw with Iraq from the time they started campaigning, in Bush's case maybe because he wanted to finish daddy's war, or avenge the insult to daddy's honor, or to show daddy that he was all grown up. The reasons don't matter. What matters is that he had that goal, Cheney pushed the right buttons to make that goal the top priority, and the flunkies at the next step down got the message loud and clear: justify war. Find a reason. Discover what Saddam is really up to. And when their underlings got the word, the shivered and passed it on down in more explicit terms. It's like that old story about the engineers who proclaim some new plan as shit that stinks something fierce, and the word passes uphill until the managers hear (and pass on) that it is fertilizer and it is powerful. In this case, the word changed until it got to the bottom, where they just did what they thought was wanted.

No, it's not exactly lying. But it is dishonest, and nobody in that position of power should have that kind of blinders on, or hire only staff who have not an iota of independence.

Want to get around the asinine rules that you have to leave checked luggage unlocked so the security thieves can rifle through it?

Buy a starter pistol. You can get them for $10 mail order, $20 at your local gun shop. Tiny little things, hardly take up any room. You need not buy any ammo for it.

Now pack it in your luggage. A baggie is a nice touch in the very unlikely event they actually want to see it. When you get to the airport, tell then your checked luggage has an unloaded firearm. They will give you a form to fill out declaring it unloaded and safe to fly. They may want to see it, but probably not; they don't want to be flashing guns around the airport.

What matters is that they will insist on you locking your luggage. They want to see it locked; if a key, you keep it, they do not want your spare copy; if a combination, they want to make sure it is locked and you have twiddled the combination after locking it.

See, they don't trust their own thieves. They don't want their thieves to have the chance of finding a firearm, loaded or not. They want your luggage locked and out of reach of their thieves.

There is no honor among thieves, it seems.

Disclaimer: I bought a starter gun for this purpose, but haven't flown since. But others have done, and I trust their reports. Flying with firearms has well established rules and is not at all uncommon. After all, they are in checked baggage ... and locked away from the Thieves Society of Aviation goons.

The program queries the web site and makes random guesses for questions it hasn't seen before. This is multiple choice, right? Presumably there can be one wrong among five questions. When a page is accepted, it will know that most of the answers are right, maybe all. Do this often enough and it will learn which answers are right and wrong.

This sounds like a one hour program plus some trial and error testing. A day tops.

Right. Management tells Congress to not increase the mandatory gas mileage, and you blame the government? Maybe for being patsies, but that is nothing unusual.

Government won't come up with nationalized health care? Odd, seems other businesses are coping just fine. And like you say, Detroit was coping a few years ago.

You have your priorities wrong. This is 90% management's screwup. I give the other 10% to the UAW only because they have been as shortsighted and pigheaded as management, but they don't make the decisions, management does, and they have been wrong wrong wrong. SUVs when any bozo could see the imports were cleaning up with small cars. Unreliable unimaginative claptrap when the imports were getting better and better.

Management deserves to be thrown out on their keister. The UAW bosses deserve to earn minimum wage from here on. Unfortunately, it will be the workers who get the shaft while the bosses go on to bigger and better screwups.