The Department of Transportation, or DoT as all the cool kids call it, responded to my complaint quickly. Part of their reply was:

That was the good news.

The bad news was that their representative said that the DoT can't make Delta refund the money. The DoT can (if I may paraphrase this in the parliance of our times) only put this down on their Permanent Record, and maybe there will be a penalty later on down the road.
In other words, there will be no penalty.   Not now, not later.

So, the DoT will not force them to give me my money back.   But it WILL force them to send me an email explaining themselves!   That'll show 'em!

This is government by the corporations for the corporations. So nothing is going to come of this, despite the DoT actually stating that Delta appears to be in the wrong here. The silver lining is that the DoT seems to agree with me, and that will be handy in court. Oops! I shouldn't have gotten ahead of myself here. Pretend I didn't say that! Just keep reading, and then later I'll say that.

Now remember -- I haven't yet actually gotten my tickets canceled. I am waiting for Delta's actual response to the DoT, because as I stated before, they won't give me a refund, and will only issue an "e-credit". And I don't want to accept their e-credit because I know that if I do, they will claim the matter is settled, and claim that I happily accepted an e-credit, and although they will not come out and say it, they would like it if I would meet an untimely end and find myself in a theological place which is theoretically very hot.
Hot as Hell, one might say.
But they won't.
Not directly, anyway.

Next: Part FOUR