Propagation: Seeds & scions (10)

10 ideas sprouting »

1. Ah, just turn the [P]lace into a Bundesrat and be done with it.

   PS: “Blagoevhich”? Is the guy like Colonel Q[']ad[d][h]af[f]i?

   Seed planted by Tom Round — 02 January 2009 @ 05:57

2. It’s an interesting list.

   Some of them are a bit fun (Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution), while others could create quite the controversy if they ever decided to force the use of their privilege (The General Commanding the Army, the Mayor of DC).

   Seed planted by boz — 02 January 2009 @ 13:49

3. I knew the name did not look right after I typed it initially.

   But it still does not look right. It is a Serbian name, and thus is a transliteration from Cyrillic. Given that the name is rendered with the final letter, Che, as English CH (rather than C, as is often done, corresponding, sans diacritical, with the Croatian spelling), the Je was left as J instead of the English phonetic Y.

   Seed planted by MSS — 02 January 2009 @ 16:51

4. Use of spellings like “ExSenator” takes the American hatred of hyphens to new extremes.

   Seed planted by Tom Round — 02 January 2009 @ 20:37

5. Hey, I’m just relieved that no Canadian has bagged me for hyphenating their governor-general, eh. And that no Canadian, New Zealander, Queenslander, or resident of New England in NSW has bagged me for tagging ‘eh’ on sentences. Eh.

   Seed planted by Alan — 03 January 2009 @ 19:03

6. As someone noted at the Volokh Conspiracy page I linked to, the US Constitution itself alternates between “Vice-President” and “Vice President”. I suppose we are lucky Webster didn’t also add “Vicepresident” or even “VicePresident”.

   Seed planted by Tom Round — 04 January 2009 @ 09:08

7. I’ve always vaguely wondered why ‘lieutenant governor’ instead of ‘vice-governor’, but the topic is getting very unsenatorial.

   Seed planted by Alan — 04 January 2009 @ 13:29

8. Okay, back to the Senate… Notice that some nations try to have all Senators chosen more or less on the same basis (USA, Aust, Canada), whereas others have upper houses with members seated via a variety of methods – elected (directly or indirectly) and/or appointed and/or hereditary and/or ex officio, and in the last category, on various bases, eg:

   * regional or local heads of govt (as diverse as Russia formerly giving provincial governors, and Northern Ireland giving the mayors of its two largest cities, seats in the upper house)

   * traditional leaders/ rulers (Fiji, Marshall Islds, Swaziland… I guess this shades into “hereditary” as in UK and Belgium)

   * religious leaders (UK bishops and, IIRC, the 1939-89 Polish parliament-in-exile reserved seats for the Catholic Church)

   * particular ethnic minorities

   * former heads of State (Italy, and note Mill’s proposal in Rep Govt for a longer list)

   So it seems to me that the US Senate’s “guest list” is in some ways an echo of the Irish/ UK/ Belgian etc model of an Upper House as a place where particular office-holders have a right to attend ex officio, although of course in the US they don’t have the same rights as members do.

   Seed planted by Tom Round — 04 January 2009 @ 19:31

9. A number of parliaments, France and the Netherlands are examples, have Social and Economic Councils with roughly the same functional group structure as the Irish and Belgian senates and some rights to be consulted on legislation. Maybe there’s some inherent tendency towards a Millsian third chamber.

   Seed planted by Alan — 04 January 2009 @ 20:43

10. Okay, back to the typography: “ExSenator,” and “VicePresident” remind me that the West needs to adapt to Chinese typography. For example, the city and state of ChongQing are written with two characters in Chinese, so rather than write it as Chongqing or split it into two words as Chong Qing, it is often written in China as ChongQing, a sensible system to me. More importantly, it seems sensible to many Chinese. Get used to it.

    But as for the German-style “representationreinforcing,” I vote for the hyphen.

    Seed planted by Wilf Day — 07 January 2009 @ 01:49

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