She was 24. She was barely old enough to be out of college, and she was earning about the same as a person working full time at McDonalds. She had, admittedly, no experience flying in the conditions in which that plane was flying. I am one of those "nervouse fliers", although I fight it every way I can (including reading this column and taking to heart your confidence in the airline industry and facts to support it). But this does not give me confidence. It's insane, especially given your previous column about how many more experienced pilts are dropped to the bottom of lists because of archaic union rules.

Maybe one of the things that needs to be changed is the way pilots are hired and paid. This will require the FAA breaking a lot of contracts, but I have no problem with that. Seniority should count for something. Experience matters when there are 50 or 350 lives at stake. And they need to establish minimum pay rates and working conditions - I don't want my pilot to have been on the red-eye the night before he or she takes me to Denver in an impending blizzard. Pilots should have to have quarters, including a private bedroom, near their flight station and they should be paid enough (Or have their pay subsidized) to afford them. And they should be required to use them. A lot of car accidents are caused by tired drivers, and I don't see why exhausted pilots should be any more tolerated.

These changes would offend a lot of mid-level seniority pilots who would lose power, but they would make flying safer, especially in an era when regional carriers are flying more and more and offering less and less to their crews. It would add a bit to the cost of flying, but given the relative costs of the planes and the crew I doubt it would be that dramatic. Probably less than the ridiculous amount we pay to enforce the rules about not bringing water aboard planes.

The census does NOT count Hispanics as white. They divide the groups into "White, non-Hispanic" and "Hispanic". That is because "Hispanic" is not technically a race, but an ethnicity, but Mexicans, Latinos and Puerto Ricans have enough of a distinct identity that it makes sense to distinguish them from "Caucasian, not Hispanic" demographically.

...they how are they going to harm U.S. troops? Whenever I hear words coming out of Obama's mouth that could easily be coming from Bush, I get a really bad feeling. I keep hoping that I was wrong - that Obama is really what he portrayed himself to be during the election, that the left was right and he is going to be the best President ever. So far, what I'm seeing is a lot of talk that ends up not adding up to anything meaningful. I had a feeling that Obama was more like Reagan than Kennedy, no matter how many Kennedy-esque photos he took. That feeling has not been quashed.

Come on, Obama... prove me wrong. Please. I need to be wrong on this. The nation can't afford for me to be right.

The people at the top have the system gamed. The market that defines their salaries is no more "free" than the Enron inspired energy trading that resulted in California's fake energy crisis a few years back. They get paid based on the pay of other corporate leaders whose salary rates are defined by Boards that they sit on. They can give themselves a raise by simply giving someone else a raise and then claiming that they are underpaid based on the other person getting paid more. They get paid "performance" bonuses whether the corporate performance is good or not. They set the criterion for what "good performance" is, usually based on short term profits and stock gains not long-term economic benefits to the company. And the stockholders, who should be able to rein these people in, are generally unable to do so because their ownership is, individually, too small to make a difference (I own part of a lot of companies through my 401k - I don't even know which ones, much less have any ability to influence their governance).

The system is rigged, and they benefit. These idiots wouldn't know a "free market" if it landed on their shoulder and bit them on the nose. All we need to do is to change the system so that stockholders get to automatically vote on new hires and pay raises for existing office holders and their power will miraculously disappear because the market will not tolerate incompetence.

Face it, journalists in jail are not "sexy", unless the journalist is a very pretty young woman or if the journalist is personally known to them.