beepster FWIW i have a few other bugs to anticipate if you have a similar workflow to me. found a nasty one involving fades on cropped clips....what i thought was just a graphical bug showing interior parts of a clip's waveform being shrunk by fade-in actually measured as db reduction on random phrases in the middle of clips. this one i can reproduce and plan on youtubing. i.e. imagine doing final edits/crossfades only to find in horror random phrases in the middle of clips were volume attenuated.

Haven't noticed that one and I've done quite a bit of editing but I'll keep an eye out for it. Very strange.

  You can lock tracks but this is meant to prevent any inadvertent changes. 
For automation the edit filter is used to isolate various automation for easy editing. Or use automation lanes. 

gerberbaby, something you can try is to use a different screenset to the one you're currently in.

I find a lot of Sonar's graphical/selection problems are a direct result of a corrupt screenset.