Thanks, you were spot on, it was a mod_security rule on hostgators servers.
they said it was a minor rule so they went ahead and fixed it for that domain.
The following is a screen shot, I captured in the hopes of saving others from my hours of pain, feel free to use it in any way for documentation.
Thanks again,
Roger
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s120/sh/9633437a-80d6-4043-b428-9be22bd8906d/6469bba7bed8df81f2dccb89058e2af3