Talk:Federal government of the United States
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[edit] Lacking
It seems to me that this article needs a few things. One, it doesn't seem to say a lot about the constitution, the document creating the branches. Second, it makes little/no mention of checks and balances between the three. I don't have a third currently....--FivePointCalvinist (My Friends Call me 'Cal') 02:10, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Wording
In the introductory section, there is the following text:
The laws of the United States are contained in Acts of Congress; administrative regulations, and judicial cases interpreting the statutes and regulations.
It appears to me that the grammar obscures the intended meaning. I think this should instead be:
The laws of the United States are contained in Acts of Congress; administrative regulations and judicial cases interpret these statutes and regulations.
The original author may have also meant:
The laws of the United States are contained in Acts of Congress, administrative regulations, and judicial cases that interpret the statutes and regulations.
I think the first suggestion is more accurate, but I'm not sure. Thoughts? John 21:11, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Dear fellow editors: From a technical legal standpoint, either formulation is accurate and neither is necessarily "more" accurate than the other. Contrary to what we may have been taught in grade school, regulations and judicial cases are technically part of "the law." In grade school, some of us learned that the legislative branch "makes" the laws (the statutes), the executive branch "enforces" the laws (such as by issuing administrative regulations, etc.), and the judicial branch "only interprets" the laws (through judgments and orders, etc.). These kinds of generalizations, while "correct" in the sense in which they are intended, do perhaps obscure the details: the executive is involved in "making" statutes by signing Acts of Congress into law, for example. Both the executive and the legislative (specifically the Senate) "make" treaties (which are part of our law) in the sense that the executive signs treaties and the Senate ratifies them. And, of course the biggest dirty little "secret" of all (it's not really a secret): American law, like the law of Canada, Australia, etc., is based on something called "English common law" which is primarily case law (judge-made law, not merely "interpretation" of statutes). Just scratchin' the surface here..... Yours, Famspear 20:49, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Vandalism
Fixed the vandalism (most of it anyway). Couldn't figure out that weird little box in the courts section. I don't know why people who have disagreements with the government feel they should take the right of information from others. sigh.. Vertigo700 06:38, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
I think this should be at Politics of the United States, like with the other countries. In spite of this page. --KQ 21:27 Aug 31, 2002 (PDT)
Perhaps this should be at U.S. Federal Government ? Susan Mason
- Oh no, not again... ;) -- Oliver P. 05:11 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)
Shrug...People generally don't say "Federal Government of the United States", its too stilted. Susan Mason
- Plenty of Americans refer to it as the "federal government." For the benefit of non-Americans, the full title Federal Government of the United States makes perfect sense. Funnyhat 01:08, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I have no preference for either, rather I have been attempting to fill out the Politics of the United States page and this page. I simply wanted to indicate that this page was dealing only with the federal government and not any state or local government. - Sfmontyo
I suppose what Im getting at is we should generally write United States as U.S.. Susan Mason
Oh my God. Although I disagree with his last comment, I'm afraid I have to agree with Lir on something. Beware, the end of the world is at hand. This article should be at Government of the United States, not "Federal Government" ... -- Zoe
- Zoe, I'm not sure if Susan was reacting to the fact that "Federal Government" and "Gov of U.S." might be considered redundant. I believe that that is what you are referring to. Is that correct? I think that Government of the United States is a bit too vague as it might mean:
- ) all the governments in the country which are of course the federal, state, and local governments or
- ) it might just mean the federal.
- If you are used to thinking that the U.S. is a federal republic, then you'd probably think of the 2. I changed it in attempt to make it more clear that this article deals solely in regards to the federal gov in context of the Politics of the United States. -- Sfmontyo
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- "Government of the United States" refers to the national government. The national government of the United States is a federal government. Therefore, "Federal Government of the United States" is redundant. -- Zoe
The term "government" is more general than that, as Sfmontyo just pointed out. Perhaps Government of the United States should discuss the general structure of the system of government, outlining how the federal, state, and local governments interact. By the way, Zoe, you are making a different point from Susan Mason (whose proposed title left in the word "Federal"), so apart from your agreement that the current title is wrong, you're not in agreement on the details. So no need to worry too much. ;) -- Oliver P. 10:51 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)
- I looked at some of the government web sites that I have been using for info and this is what I found:
- from usembassy.state.gov
- The federal government of the United States consists of three parts: the executive, legislative and judicial branches. The ...
- from www.info.gov
- Describes the basis of the government of the U.S. ... Federal, State, and local governments are explained and compared.
- Those sites make a distinction between the government of the United States being all three versus the federal government being just well, the federal government. BTW: In the Politics of the United States page, you'll find a general description of the state and local govs, again taken from the usinfo.state.gov site. - Sfmontyo
- One more thing, just to be clear, I believe that the above shows that there are at least two different ways of interpreting the phrase government of the United States and that there is sufficient ambiguity to warrant adding the term Federal in order to disambiguate the two meanings. I know that in other contexts, government of the United States refers solely to the federal government. - Sfmontyo
- Isn't that what should be discussed here? All of the states have their own pages or sections on the state governments. -- Zoe
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- I thought about it and if someone does the work of renaming it :), what I'll do is what Oliver suggested, that is, I'll place a sentence at the top stating that the article is about the federal government and point them to the Politics of the United States page and the individual state pages for info about the state and local govs. Cheers - Sfmontyo
"Federal Government of the United States" will save us that disambiguation at the top. I'll move this back if no one objects (the fool who moved it in the first place didnt bother to move the talk page). --Jiang 10:17, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)
There is an interesting proportion of description devoted to executive versus judicial and legilative branches. Also in the "related links section." Of course it's all NPOV so it's not biased at ALL in its presentation. Should NPOV include the organization of articles?
- Seems like the best way to correct the disproportion would be to expand the legislative and judicial sections. The executive is the largest and most complex sector of the federal government, though, so perhaps it makes some sense for it to be a little bigger than the others. - Walkiped 03:31, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
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- Maybe it would be prudent to cut down on the sections on the executive branch and rather refer to the actual articles where each department is described. That would make the whole article less bulky at once. It's a big change though so I'd rather hear some comments before going on. - sebmol 20:11, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
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- Sounds like a good idea to me. - Walkiped 07:13, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
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- Done. Please let me know if this turned out allright. If not, please feel free to edit. It may also be good to include maybe some form of chart or diagram in this article that presents the composition and relationships within the US government.--sebmol 12:20, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
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Regarding Vandalism, the office of President was described as uniquely "sexually active". Changed that. Diesel 3:15, 27 Aug 2005
[edit] Definition of Federal
One problem with the title of this article and some of its content is that federal has more than one meaning. It has a technical meaning and a more generally understood meaning. The technical meaning of federal (as in federation) is the system of states joined under a relatively strong national government--in other words, a government with two levels--national and state. The other meaning of federal is the national level of government. The problem with referring to the national level of government as the federal government is that it makes it difficult or impossible to explain what a federal system, a federation, and federalism actually mean.
The accurate title of this article should be "National government of the United States." 202.174.144.202 12:31, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
[edit] capitalization
is there a deliberate reason that "president" is rarely capitalized? could be an internationalization issue, but, if nobody objects within a reasonable time, i'll take a suspense action to fix it. --216.237.179.238 23:31, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
...and then i'll start working on the execrable mess in internationalization...sigh...i wish that nice mr. siegenthaler had just shut up and started editing...we could use the fingers... --216.237.179.238 23:31, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Okay, here's the explanation:
1. In each usage capitalized in this article, the word President is a proper noun, and stands in place of the individual that might hold that office. There may be spots in here where the noun form of the word is used purely as a common noun, but I didn't see one that stood out enough to make an example. Words like presidential are clearly not proper nouns and do not need capitalization.
2. This article is more associated with the culture of the United States government than to general usage than is your average Wikipedia article, so I figure using U.S. government style rules might be appropriate (though reason #1 is sufficient, it's always good to have a second). In the U.S. government, when you use President to mean POTUS, you capitalize it. BTW, here's the rule:
3.35. To indicate preeminence or distinction in certain
specified instances, a common-noun title immediately following
the name of a person or used alone as a substitute for it is
capitalized.
Title of a head or assistant head of state:
William J. Clinton, President of the United States: the
President; the President-elect; the Executive; the Chief
Executive...
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/stylemanual/2000/chapter_txt-3.html
It is only capitalized when you are talking directly about the President. If you are talking about any form of presidents, or any of them, it is lower cased. For instance, "Mr. President," would be capitalized. Though, "The United States of America's leader is always a president," would be lowered. Also, if you are talking about other forms of presidents, such as presidents of a company, would be lower cased, unless you're talking about that President.PЄ|>ρ3® 23:04, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] President
- I changed the "he" to "he or she" in reference to the President. "he/she", "(s)he", "the President" are other options . . .
05:06, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
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- Actually a few years ago, the United States government, tryed to be politcally correct, and tried to add he or she to everything, it found it would have to add tons of more pages to documents, and the cost was astounding, the congress decdided the he was the general term for he or she
CuBiXcRaYfIsH 20:47, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Weird font issue
Does anyone notice that the legislative branch and judicial branch headers are in small-case, non-bold lettering, but the executive branch has PRESIDENT and VICE-PRESIDENT and CABINET subheaders in huge, bold letters. Honestly, it makes the executive seem more important than the other two branches, as opposed to checked-and-balanced (as the founding fathers were wont for them to be). -Super90
- I think you're overreacting a bit as far as saying it goes against checks-and-balances, though I do think the VP gets more space than the office warrants, thought I'm not sure the best way to edit it. Ddye 14:55, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Preamble
The article could use a mention of the preamble, and perhaps a discourse on the possible course(s) the republic might have taken if it were used for what a preamble is usually used for: a preliminary introduction to explain purpose.
That's an interesting thought. I must aggree. By the way, excellent job as the voice of Patrick Star on Spongebob Squarepants. Your attitude resembles your character as well as what you have to say. In a word: "Duh-hoy!" I can almost picture you saying something like that.
[edit] Engimatic text moved from article
The following text added by an anonymous user on 26 December 2006 has been moved from the article:
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- Senators, on the other hand, have a responsibility directly to the state they represent, and not to the people directly. Even though the method of election of senators was changed to a direct election by the people, the senators still represent the state. The Amendment to change the election of the Sentors from the state legislatures to a direct election by the people, has created an apparent conflict, whereby, Senators are forced to focus their attention for political reasons on the interests of the people, as opposed to the interest of the state, which do not always coincide.
This material appears to be original research, and unverified commentary. Also, the statement that Senators have a responsibility directly to the state rather than to the people is a sophistry in the absence of an explanation of the writer's distinction between "the state" and "the people." The statement that there is an apparent conflict in connection with some supposed "forced" focus by senators "for political reasons" on the interests of "the people" as opposed to "the state" is too vague and unsourced for inclusion in an encyclopedia article in its present form. The passage also raises the concept that somehow the interests of "the people" and "the state" may not coincide, but does not explain what this would really mean.
In short, this material consists of unverified statements of opinion, of a particular point of view, and raises more questions than it answers. If this material is going to be included in an encyclopedia article, some work on it is needed. Yours, Famspear 17:50, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
