The Founding Fathers explicitly made the Senate a "house of the States", where Senators, essentially acting as agents of the state legislatures, had the power to amend or veto bills produced in the House of Representatives. However, being unelected, Senators while enjoying greater prestige than Representatives, were also in a position where their powers were not democratically derived. The "check" as it were on the Senate was that any significant interference in bills would inevitably be viewed somewhat more dimly, which is how it has worked out in most Westminster parliaments.

With the 17th Amendment, the Senate gained the democratic legitimacy which in facts leads to the greater possibility of this seeming end-run around the requirement that money bills originate in the House. You don't really find this happening overly much in Canada, where the lack of democratic legitimacy means that Senators usually do not feel they have the right to alter taxation or spending bills. In the UK, of course, explicit measures were put in place in the 1911 and 1949 Parliament Acts that heavily restrict the House of Lords' ability to tamper with such bills.

It's similar to the situation at the end of WWI. Versailles called for wide-ranging disarmament among all the belligerents, which was all well and good in theory. In reality, of course, a great deal of the R&D that had gone into new weaponry; tanks, planes, ship designs, and so forth, still existed. In fact, the most valuable commodity of all, the German plans for the 1919 campaign that never was, still sat in archives, just waiting for someone to come along and dust them off.

The cat is out of the bag, has been out of the bag for a few decades now. When most of us look at devices like Mars Rovers, we're impressed by the technology and science, and yet that very same technology is easily adaptable to building autonomous weapons. Even if the Great Powers agreed, you can be darned sure they would still have labs building prototypes, and if the need arose, manufacturing could begin quickly.

Largely, I expect, because that was the principle in effect in the British Parliament. It's a common feature of most, if not all, bicameral legislative assemblies, and it dates back to that division of powers between the House of Commons and the House of Lords in Britain. The problem comes from the fact that the US Senate is elected, and thus it gains the democratic legitimacy to significantly tamper with bills. It's a debate being had in Canada right now, where we're trying to decide whether to reform or abolish our Senate. The fear up here is that an elected Senate (Canada's Senators are appointed by the Governor General in the name of the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister) would become like the US Senate, a competitor to the lower house, and that the supervisory role would be abandoned. Even in the UK the Lords' tendency to try to overrule the House of Commons reached the point where the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 were pushed through and give the Government an override power at second reading so the Lords cannot block a bill.

TrueCrypt worked flawlessly on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Anything which supports only one of the three major platforms is no successor of TrueCrypt.

Because I'm the guy flying over my neighbors' swimming pools to take pictures of people in bathing suits.

Science-deniers, particularly those seeking to deny science based on statistics, frequently cherry pick statistics. That's how you get the whole "18 year no warming" claim.

I don't care about your excuses. I think you should be banned from flying over a property if the property owner deems he doesn't want you flying over his property, and further, I think a property owner should have the right to shoot your toy out of the sky and send you a bill for the bullet. I'd actually make it a criminal charge with a minimum $50,000 fine. I'd make it so expensive and difficult for you to play with your little kiddy toys over my property that you'd finally just go fucking home.

Self entitled assholes like you have made it clear the only way to deal with drones is to make it so damaging for assholes like you to even fly one that you find some other toys to play with

In New Zealand, as in other Commonwealth Realms, public land is owned by the Crown, so the Queen in Right of New Zealand, can set any regulations it wants on who can fly over Crown land.

Sooner or later it's going to happen elsewhere. The extraordinary lack of etiquette and basic decency among some drone owners is steadily going to make the public outcry to do something about the problem greater and greater.

Stop flying your fucking toys over my fucking property.

Except that also means other insects we like a lot less are also likely evolving resistance, which means we'll produce even nastier toxins and start wiping out bee populations again.

Because the poor will be greatly benefited by rain belts shifting away from them, or being knee deep in water.

And where exactly will the US get its grain from when the rain belt ends up in northern Canada?

The Beringia hypothesis has the advantage of not invoking a paleolithic ship construction industry. I know this is all very romantic, but for the moment, there is little evidence beyond some chicken bones that even Polynesians, within the 1,300 to 1,500 years (the settlement date of Easter Island) made it in any significant numbers. The simplest explanation is that multiple groups, some with different genetic heritages, went across the land bridge, some basically settling there until the end of the glacial maximum, and others possibly coming later. Multiple waves don't require multiple routes.

I'm thinking the worst aspect of that higher gravity would be a much denser atmosphere. We certainly could survive in 1.6g environment, but we couldn't survive the crushing weight of that atmosphere.

Well, bully for you. I bet you feel all special posting this here. Makes you feel superior and important I bet.