Bug Dout wrote:
If events occured as described here, why then did they not state the
facts immediately and lie that they had slept?

What report said they claimed they had slept? All the news reports I saw
claimed the pilots said they weren't asleep at any time during the flight.

So the above appears to be at complete variance with the reports I've seen
- perhaps you have a different incident in mind?

And then later change
their story about being completely engrossed in their laptops.

I simply don't believe that "the NTSB official came over to Tim and
said he did not know why they even called them in for this event.
There was no safety issue." Oh, please. Sure as hell there was a
safety issue, when an airliner overflies its destination and is out of
communication for that long.

Actually the posting explicitly claims they didn't actually overfly their
destination - they at first thought they had. Radar records would indicate
whether this was true.

They may have flown past the fix they were last cleared to, but news
reports claimed they flew past their final destination.

The Captain and F.O. were careless and sloppy. Period. They got a
good deal by merely having their licenses revoked. I don't think they
should be banned for life, but having to re-do all the training again
from ab-initio is perfectly fair for what they did to their
passengers, flight attendants, their fellow professional pilots, and
the national air control system.

And Ming the Merciless would simply execute their trainers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNUcpXKiNZo