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The command you're entering blocks the main thread while awaiting a reply from the main thread of the current process. By definition, this can't work.

In general, as commands entered via the console are run in the main thread of the Sublime Text process, there are many ways to cause harm to the process. The only alternative would be to run a sandboxed version of Python that couldn't interact with the system, which would not be desirable.

The above aside, you may be able to get the desired result running the command via a thread in a plugin. However, due to the way the Python Global Interpreter Lock works, I can't guarantee this will work without trying it.
It's a sequence key binding: first press ctrl+k, then press ctrl+b
The menu bar can be hidden from the View menu
Please read the OS X Lion section at http://www.sublimetext.com/docs/2/vintage.html
This can be done with the tab_size file setting
There is a setting to disable tab completion: http://www.sublimetext.com/docs/2/tab_completion.html
Only currently open files and files in open projects and available via Goto Anthing. Closing all files, and removing all folders will clear it out.

Very old versions of Sublime Text 2 used to populate it with recently closed files, but no current version does
The find_selected_text file setting is used for this. It defaults to false on OS X to adhere to platform conventions.