The existing TSA has not presented a single successful prosecution, nor any "terrorists" successfully blocked by the terrorism watch list. The effective change in security has been the change in behavior of on board passengers and crew who no longer wait for the plane to land in control of the hijackers, and simple steps like better cockpit doors. There's little if any evidence that the enhanced check-ins are anything but security theater.

I've flown through dozens of airports since 9/11. Much like those attackers, I could easily pick the one with the worst security to stage a demonstration of just how simple it is to get weapns past their security.

> the real cost is showing up to be photographed and present whatever records are required.

This is often not a small cost for someone on limited income, trying to take care of children or hold down a job with medical issues, long commutes, or poor transporation. Voter ID laws and poll taxes have a terrible history, and have been part of blocking poorer Amercians, especially black Americans, from being able to vote since the end of the US Civil War.

> The FBI is barring you from employment for _getting caught lying to them_.

"Fixed That For You".

If you commit illegal acts, need to lie about them, _and cannot beat a simple polygraph_,, I'm afraid you have no role in modern federal agencies.

The supplies of deuterium and tritum for powering all existing fusion reactor designs are far, far more difficult to harvest and supply in bulk than fossil fuels or solar. As best I can tell, the available supplies of those fusion fuels is limited by the production from ordinary fission reactors. Since the last large scale refiner of deuterium from other sources went out business in 1997, it's not an economically viable resource. Essentially, if we first scale up our fission power to many times its current volume, we could use the byproducts to fuel fusion reactors. Their maximum output would be only a few percent of that of the fusion reactors required to fuel them in bulk,

Unless someone works a way to fuse plain hydrogen in bulk, efficiently, there is no economic point to fusion energy research. The only source of bulk fuel for it is the solar wind. If you've got large scale fusion fuel collectors in orbit, simply collect the solar energy directly and cut out the very expensive, quite radioactive middleman of fusion fuel.

I do believe you've forgotten SELinux and requiring passwords for your particular tool.

This has actually been tried.

                              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

I must say that it is _completely_ ethical to discuss adoption with fertility patients. Depending on the medical issues, they can be dangerous for the mother and the fetus, draining for both parents, and hideously expensive whether or not covered by insurance. It is the doctor's role to explain the _options_ and their consequences.

There are many equivalents. A lifestyle change can often be more effective treatment than the most extensive medication or surgery, whether it be moving to a better climate to ease asthma, moving to a less sunny climate for people with a history of skin cancer, giving up smoking, getting exercise and improving diet for someone with early diabetes, getting enough sleep, etc. Discussion of lifestyle and the medical consequences of it is part of a doctor's responsibility.

> I Doubt any kind of genital surgery was common in the 19th century

I'd certainly agree that the transplantation or reconstruction of working sexual organs was unavailable. But what, precisely, would you call castration, circumcision, clitorectomy, C-section, or genital piercings? Even abortions and surgical assistance with cysts, tumors, and physical trauma all existed, through they would have been emergency treatments rather than scheduled treatment.

You've a point about state law. I was admittedly referring to federal law.

Guns can be _extremely effective_ at changing governments, ranging from assassination of critical leaders to armed revolt. The assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand of Austria triggered World War I, which reshaped Europe and governments and economies around the world.

Then you need to review the Ninth Amendment, which spelled out that rights not explicitly mentioned by the Constitution may still exist and be recognized in a Constitutionally relevant way. There had been hesitance about stating rights in the Constitution explicitly meaning that rights _not_ spelled out would no longer be acknowledged as valid.

I've seen people harassed by the police for carrying costume swords, with no edge, at a Shakespeare performance fresh from a day at a Renaissance festival. The police tried to confiscate his sword, without any receipt. When it was clear he would not surrender it without being arrested and creating a paper trail for his confiscated property, they eventually turned him loose.

The earliest "gun control laws" were applied by Imperial governments to colonists, to control a growing civilian population with a remotely managed and badly outnumbered Imperial military in _every_ nation's colonies. Then there was a long gap, due to the War for Independence and the 2nd Amendment, then it started up as a US federal policy in the 1930's applied to machine guns and sawed off shotguns. It grew in the 1960's _due to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King_, which illustrated the growing risk of assassination for respected leaders.

Not according to typesetters, POSIX ANSII, or any of the forms of UTF8.

I'm afraid that analyzing those disasters in terms of the _specific_ mechanical failures misses the point. It's possible to spend a project's entire budget, and go profoundly over budget to the point of complete failure, by trying to find and resolve each individual bug as it turns up. I'm afraid that the frequency of space shuttle failures was _amazingly_ low considering the flaws in the overall manufacturing and design process, and I do applaud the individual engineers and inspectors who did their best to keep those craft alive. It seems to have been a constant, hammering refrain of "we have to change this bit to work with that other bit which no one could have foreseen", or in the case of the O rings, "now we cannot launch in cold weather". It's extremely expensive, and demanding, to keep any project alive with that sort of segmented design from conflicting designers and manufacturers, funding turf wars, and scattered manufacture. From my personal systems and international work, it's a _nightmare_.

Pointing out that Dream Chaser would not have that particular failure is irrelevant to the flaws that create these kinds of failure modes of interlocking systems. These failure modes kept playing out for the basic Shuttle design in equipment failures, in launch delays, and in several cases, in the deaths of all astronauts aboard. So I'm afraid that focusing on preventing mechanical disasters like the O ring needs to go further upstream, to the political process.