If you need to recourse to "common sense" to prove your point...

That's actually what it's like at "Mojave Spaceport". Hangers of small aviation practicioners and their junk. Gary Hudson, Burt Rutan, etc. Old aircraft and parts strewn about. Left-over facilities from Rotary Rocket used by flight schools. A medium-sized facility for Orbital. Some big facilities for BAE, etc. An aircraft graveyard next door.

SS2 has not completed testing and it is probable that there will be a need for redesign of one or more components. So, this is a really bad time to have the hand-off. Publicity isn't a good reason.

The problem with the electoral college is not that it exists, it's that it's being used improperly as a flawed proxy for the popular vote instead of as it was originally intended, which was to reflect the will of the individual states, not the people.

Are you sure that's how it was intended? The EC has state-apportioned representatives because the constituents of the Continental Congress and later the Convention were colonies, later called states. Neither the US constitution, nor does any commentary I'm aware of, state that electors are pledged to represent the interests of their state.

Of course, at every crucial point in history prior to the 1860s, somebody suggests reducing the power of states in favor of either democratic populism (Jackson) of federal power (Hamilton, Washington...), and the argument against goes something like, "You're just trying to abolish slavery!" American federalism was invented as a pretext to sustain slavery in the colonies where it was economically entrenched.

Who's "we"?

One or two shots to a subject wearing body armor is typically enough to incapacitate them. That second shot can even be fatal, depending on the armor, the round, and the shot placement. Armor is there to prevent penetration and dissipate as much of the bullet's energy as possible. However, that first shot is going to do enough damage to leave at least a good amount (if not a ridiculous amount) of bruising around the impact zone. At that point, the body armor is compromised (not useless, but no longer fully capable). Another shot will do anything from leave a lot more bruising to fully penetrate. The most likely case is where you'll start getting ribs cracked. All subsequent shots increase the damage to the subject and each carries a rapidly increasing risk of penetration of the armor and death for the subject. Even without penetration of the armor, the human body can only handle so much kinetic energy.

In any event, it would be uncommon for an individual who's taken two shots to the chest to be combat effective. More commonly, they'd be lying on the ground in a lot of pain. Considering how many attempts it takes to get a shot on target for the head versus the center of mass, you're vastly better off going for the center of mass even if you know for a fact that your target is wearing armor. And before you bring up the North Hollywood shootout, understand that there were a number of factors that allowed those guys to carry on during the shootout, not the least of which was the poor accuracy of the firearms available to the police on scene at the range at which they were forced to engage.

It's unfortunate that the man you knew died while trying to stop a courthouse shooter. However, that one incident doesn't change the fact that the odds vastly favor center of mass targeting. Getting headshots on a paper target at a fixed distance and height, with no motion whatsoever, in an unstressful situation isn't that challenging. Getting them on a real human head at variable heights and distances, full range of motion, non-targets in the way and behind the target, in the most stressful situation you'll ever face (where millions of years of human evolution are working against you to destroy your vision, higher reasoning, etc) is one of those things best left to Delta operators who train on that day-in and day-out for years and years on end. And I'll bet if you talk to those guys, they'll also tell you that a center of mass shot is the perfect starting point as you'll get a hit faster and cut down on the motion that makes the head shot nigh impossible.

It didn't say that in the 90s. They keep tweaking it for political reasons.

"Whatever the boss says, goes" is still a constitution. The Fürerprinzip is a constitution.

Even if what the boss said went in Saudi Arabia, they still needed a way of picking the new boss, and their method has remained codified for over 70 years. If there's a government, there's a constitution.

Just going empirically, the U.S. would seem to be democratic DESPITE its republican government, not because of it.

Academically, governments are categorized by their instiutions, not by whether or not they are living up to some abstract ideal of how they "should" operate.

Maybe Democratic Republics are the exception, not the rule, and maybe the US is a sham republic and Baathist Iraq is the real one. This is the problem with your approach. If you just go by the numbers, almost all presidential republics are undemocratic, and fall to coups.

"In the UK however, rights DESCEND from government. This is philosophically far different from the situation in the USA."

Google "Magna Carta."

The United States is definitely a democracy in that we constantly have elections and the franchise is open to most people.

If you wanna get technical and definitional, this thread is about the UK, and the UK is a Westminster-style parliamentary monarchy, which is an explicitly democratic order. But this definition extends to states that I think would be problematic, like Israel, which is a republic with a parliamentary democracy, except they don't let big swathes of the population vote. Also most Communist states are, constitutionally, democratic Council republics but in practice they are so corrupt that the franchise is meaningless.

What criteria are you using to distinguish a nonconstitutional state from a constitutional one?

The Soviet Union and Baathist Iraq were "constitutional Republics."

I think, if they can indict you and bring you to trial, it's still a "problem" even if the jury sees it your way.