Word: powers
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...private citizen the odds are stacked against him. The independent counsel does not have the same time or cost constraints as a traditional prosecutor - in fact, he has a team of lawyers devoted exclusively to building as many separate cases as possible against a single defendant. This power is somewhat nullified in the courtlike settings of an impeachment trial, as congressmen are given to partisanship and voting the will of the public. Such benefits would be lost in a jury trial...
...about 10,000 times as far away as Pluto. A trip to the stars within a human lifetime requires a spacecraft that cruises at more than 10,000 miles a second and accelerates to this speed within 10 years. The engine would have to deliver about a megawatt of power for every pound of weight of the ship. There is no way an engine that small and that powerful could keep itself cool. Even if the fuel is something exotic like antimatter, carrying far more energy than sunlight or uranium, the problem of cooling the engine remains insuperable. Travel...
...about unmanned space probes going to the stars? Unmanned probes can be much smaller and lighter than manned spaceships. That means the total power required for a probe to reach the stars is much less. But the unmanned probe still needs an engine delivering one megawatt per pound. The problem of cooling the engine remains the same, whether the ship is manned or unmanned, and the conclusion is the same. Unmanned probes are not going to reach the stars within this century...
Ultimately, one can imagine scaling up the Starwisp by a factor of 1 million, so that the fishnet is big enough to carry human passengers to the stars. The radio transmitter to drive it would use far more power than all the power stations on earth now generate. Some day we may have this much power to spare for voyages of exploration, but not soon. Perhaps around the middle of the third millennium...
...Although Fujimori is still widely credited with curbing terrorism and runaway inflation with his tough policies, his authoritarian streak and the poor performance of his country's economy has alienated many voters. But Fujimori made it clear three years ago that he had no intention of handing over power when he passed a law entitling him to the extra term on the basis that the constitution he rewrote in 1992 came into effect only after his initial election - and had congress dismiss three constitutional court judges who challenged this interpretation. "His critics also say that in order to be reelected...