OK, let's presuppose the argument that this is necessary to national security is valid. Great. I stipulate that nothing discovered in such a search should be admissible for any crime that does not fall under National Security purview.

Of course, I don't find this is a valid argument, since you could then argue anything was a National Security matter. Still, I don't suppose it is realistic to expect politicians to see it that way.

What I'd really like to see are some Draconian punishments for agency personnel who abuse this access.

Ok right so now we have both Free Speech and The Right to Bear Arms in this thread! Awaits prohibition :)

I'll drink to that!

I'd say that locating outside of the hurricane's path was the better choice

If it isn't a hurricane, it's an Earthquake. If not that, then a nasty Blizzard. Or a Tornado. You can't avoid them all, and its best to prepare as best you can for the events possible at the location that you choose. No one can prevent all disasters, but you can mitigate the risk.

More than two! Latest estimates that I've heard are that there are 600,000+ Hams in the US.

The northwest is overdue for a big earthquake... 8.5 or greater.

If corporations were not people, then when a corporation broke the law/got sued for a bigillion dollars, the stockholders would be held liable... this includes YOU with money invested indirectly via your 401K. Wanna loose your house/savings?

Who would want to use a 3D printer to print something like a car? Material costs for the printer would be 4 - 5 x the cost of a new car off the dealer lot!

Virgin Galactic is doing this because there is a market for it. As far as general business & science, I refer you to exhibit B, SpaceX, that is not catering to rich tourists, but instead investing on equipment that will eventually allow them to do the things you mention by developing new extraterrestrial resources.

As far as letting people starve and die without medicine... you want to take away more of the rich people's money so they won't spend it on space vacations? That would put all those spaceship builders out of work (and their suppliers, etc.).

I first read this as "Kindle Paperweight". The Kindle isn't THAT bad...

We've brought the smallpox virus to the brink of extinction. Say that all lab samples were destroyed... would it be our moral duty to resurrect smallpox?

The power to run those air compressors has to come from some place.

The student's analysis is based on the asteroid as described in the movie... estimated at 1000km diameter. This is a ridiculous plot device that the movie makers threw in, since if there was anything that big out there, we would know about it a LOT sooner than predicted by the movie (this is as big as Ceres, which we've known about for hundreds of years!).

A more useful analysis would be to think about something of a size that we might actually see at a late stage... say 1 - 2 km diameter. This would still be a global killer, and might very well not be seen until it was only a week or three out. Could an nuke effectively be used to nudge one this size out of an Earth impacting trajectory?

If the kids want to play with calculations like this, fine... but do something realistic, rather than goof off with Hollywood fantasy.

NOW get off my lawn!

forced to reduce the size of their army and actually feed their own people

Don't think that it would have this effect... NK has been generally starving the people for decades in favor of military might.