It's not partisan. The democrats have been just as supportive of spying as the republicans - they most they have offered are some token privacy acts that wouldn't be remotely effective.

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I should clarify that low oxygen percentage isn't the important part - it's low partial-pressure of oxygen. Reduced-oxygen at atmosphere, or atmospheric composition at reduced pressure, or even low-oxygen at high pressure (Diving on trimix) or high-oxygen at low-pressure (Spacesuits). It's all the same.

Not really an issue. Humans are fine in low-oxygen environments - so long as they don't go running around too much. Think how high mountaineers have to go before resorting to the tanks,

There are similar stories in IT about a mysterious inexplicable server outage occuring at the same time each day, after office hours, that continued even after reformatting it to eliminate any software issue. When an administrator tried staying after closing time to watch it, he found a cleaner unplugging the mysterious humming box to plug the floor buffer in.

It's an electrostatic bell, so around 1KV should be enough to run such a small one. I imagine the battery has, say, 500 discs at 2V each, all in series.

Costal flooding isn't really a concern. It's the increase in extreme weather events and the change in rainfall patterns that present a danger.

The amendments process is easily abuseable. In this case it's being abused by 'our side,' but it's still pushing the limits.

The usual trick is to sneak an amendment into a must-pass bill like an appropriations bill, or something overwhelmingly popular. Often it's a lot easier to get something added as an amendment than to get the same action to pass as an independant act.

Despite my misspelling of cipher.

You don't need mathematics for that, you need physical engineering. It's already a well-established field - games consoles, iPhones, etc. They take active measures to make sure you can't run anything the manufacturer doesn't want you to run. While it's possible to hack them by exploiting imperfections in their design, this is a task beyond the capabilities of most people - and it only gets harder as technology advances and all those handy little external busses disappear into an SoC where you can't even measure them without access to a cleanroom facility.

What you describe is a stream cypher. It doesn't offer the mathematically-unbreakable security of a true OTP, but it's still pretty secure when implemented right.

If you can solve the key distribution problem. While a OTP is certainly a useful device in some circumstances, it is only an option if the participants have previously been able to communicate over a secure channel with verified identities. It's not much use on the internet, though I have considered the possibility of it being used for corporate VPNs - with the size of hard drives now, a traveling employee could comfortably take a 1TB or more OTP with them on a business trip, more than enough to last for a couple of weeks.

The IRS targeting 'scandal' is still lacking in evidence that might confirm intent or systematic bias. Without this, there is little substantial to the accusations. It may simply be that one end of the political spectrum is more prone to pushing the limits of non-profit status.

While you do point out some serious problems, you are placing your blame too firmly on one side. For every citizen who can't spend the time to think through the 'reduce your health insurance by $2,500' claim, there is another of equally simplistic thinking who sees only 'big gubment be coming to take my money.' The problem is neither too much more too little government - the problem is people who are so caught up in supporting their overarching political ideals in all cases, they fail to properly consider each issue presented as an independent decision. They do not ask 'What is the right policy?' They ask 'What is the Conservative policy?' or 'What is the Liberal policy?'

Can't be done, for the same reason you can't make an anti-child-porn filter that cannot be easily reconfigured to block other things. The technology is the same in either the use or abuse cases - all that changes is the order given by the human element, and the entire history of politics can be summed up as trying and failing to address human fallibility, selfishness and corruptibility.