The United States of America (commonly referred to as the United States, the U.S., the USA, or America) is a federal The structure of federal governments vary from institution to institution based on a broad definition of a basic federal political system, there are two or more levels of government that exist within an established territory and govern through common institutions with overlapping or shared powers as prescribed by a constitution constitutional republic A constitutional republic is a state where the head of state and other officials are elected as representatives of the people, and must govern according to existing constitutional law that limits the government's power over citizens comprising fifty states A U.S. state is any one of 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Four states use the official title of commonwealth rather than state. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. State citizenship is and a federal district Federal districts are a type of administrative division of a federation, under the direct control of the federal government. The country is situated mostly in central North America North America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and in the western hemisphere. It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the southeast by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific Ocean; South America lies to the southeast. North, where its forty-eight contiguous states The term contiguous or continental United States refers to the 48 U.S. states located on the North American continent south of the U.S. border with Canada, plus the District of Columbia. The term excludes the states of Alaska and Hawaii, and all off-shore U.S. territories and possessions, such as Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790. The City of Washington was originally a separate municipality within the Territory of Columbia until an act of Congress in 1871 effectively merged the City and the, the capital district A capital territory or capital district is normally a specially designated administrative division where a country's seat of government is located. As such, in the federal model of government, no one state or territory takes pre-eminence because the national capital lies within its borders. A capital territory can be a specific form of federal, lie between the Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. Its name is derived from the Latin name Tepre Pacificum, "peaceful sea", bestowed upon it by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. It extends from the Arctic in the north to Antarctica in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the and Atlantic Oceans The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres , it covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface and about one-quarter of its water surface area. The first part of its name refers to the Atlas of Greek mythology, making the Atlantic the "Sea of, bordered Categories: Borders of the United States | Geography of the United States by Canada Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean. It is the world's second largest country by total area and its common border with the United States to the south and northwest is the world's longest to the north and Mexico The United Mexican States (Spanish: Estados Unidos Mexicanos ), commonly known as Mexico (English: /ˈmɛksɪkoʊ/) (Spanish: México (help·info) [ˈmexiko]), is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, to the south. The state of Alaska Alaska ( /əˈlæskə/ ) is the largest state of the United States of America by area; it is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait. Approximately half of Alaska's 698,4 is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia Russia (pronounced /ˈrʌʃə/ ; Russian: Россия, tr. Rossiya, pronounced [rɐˈsʲijə] ( listen)), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya, pronounced [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈraʦəjə] ( listen)), is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal to the west across the Bering Strait The Bering Strait , known to natives as Imakpik,[citation needed] is a sea strait between Cape Dezhnev, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, the easternmost point (169°43' W) of the Asian continent and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, USA the westernmost point (168°05' W) of the North American continent, with latitude of about 65° 40' north,. The state of Hawaii Hawaii ( /həˈwaɪ.iː/ or /həˈwaɪʔiː/ in English; Hawaiian: Mokuʻāina o Hawaiʻi) is the newest of the 50 U.S. states (August 21, 1959), and is the only state made up entirely of islands. It occupies most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of is an archipelago An archipelago is a chain or cluster of islands that are formed tectonically. The word archipelago is directly derived from the Greek ἄρχι- - arkhi- ("main") and πέλαγος - pelagos ("sea"). In Italian, possibly following a tradition of antiquity, the Archipelago (from medieval Greek *ἀρχιπέλαγος) was the in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories Territories of the United States are one type of political division of the United States, administered by the U.S. government but not any part of a U.S. state. These territories were created to govern newly acquired land while the borders of the United States were still evolving. Territories can be classified by whether they are incorporated and in the Caribbean The Caribbean is a region consisting of the Caribbean Sea, its islands , and the surrounding coasts. The region is located southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and Northern America, east of Central America, and to the north of South America and Pacific.
At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km2) and with about 308 million people, the United States is the third or fourth This is a list of the sovereign states and dependent territories of the world, sorted by total area, including all entities on the ISO standard ISO 3166-1 largest country by total area, and the third largest both by land area and population This is a list of countries by population. The list includes independent countries and inhabited dependent territories based on the ISO standard ISO 3166-1. Also given, as a percentage, is each country's population compared to the population of the world, which is presently 6,795,000,000. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse A multiethnic society is one with members belonging to more than one ethnic group, in contrast to societies which are ethnically homogenous. In practice, virtually all contemporary national societies are multiethnic. One scholar argued in 1993 that fewer than 20 of the then 180 sovereign states could be said to be ethnically and nationally and multicultural Multiculturalism is the acceptance or promotion of multiple ethnic cultures, for practical reasons and/or for the sake of diversity and applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g. schools, businesses, neighborhoods, cities or nations. In this context, multiculturalists advocate extending nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries American immigration refers to the movement of non-residents to the United States. Immigration has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of American history. The economic, social, and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding ethnicity, religion, economic benefits, job growth,.[7] The U.S. economy The economy of the United States is the largest national economy in the world in both nominal value and by purchasing power parity. Its nominal gross domestic product was estimated as $14.4 trillion in 2008, which is about three times that of the world's second largest economy, Japan Its GDP by PPP is almost twice that of the second largest, China is the largest national economy in the world, with an estimated 2008 gross domestic product The gross domestic product or gross domestic income (GDI) is a basic measure of a country's overall economic output. It is the market value of all final goods and services made within the borders of a country in a year. It is often positively correlated with the standard of living, though its use as a stand-in for measuring the standard of living (GDP) of US $ The United States dollar is the unit of currency of the United States. The U.S. dollar is normally abbreviated as the dollar sign, $, or as USD or US$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies and from others that use the $ symbol. It is divided into 100 cents (200 half-cents prior to 1857)14.4 trillion (a quarter of nominal global GDP This article includes a list of countries of the world sorted by their gross domestic product , the market value of all final goods and services from a nation in a given year. The GDP dollar estimates presented here are calculated at market or government official exchange rates and a fifth of global GDP at purchasing power parity The purchasing power parity theory uses the long-term equilibrium exchange rate of two currencies to equalize their purchasing power. Developed by Gustav Cassel in 1918, it is based on the law of one price: the theory states that, in ideally efficient markets, identical goods should have only one price).[4][8]
Indigenous peoples The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North, Central, and South America, their descendants, and many ethnic groups who identify with those peoples. They are often also referred to as Native Americans, Aboriginals, First Nations, Amerigine, and by Christopher Columbus' geographical and historical mistake,, probably of Asian origin There have been several models of migration to the New World proposed by various academic communities. The question of how, when and why humans (Paleo-Indians) first entered the Americas is of intense interest to archaeologists and anthropologists, and has been a subject of heated debate for centuries. Current understanding of human migration into, have inhabited what is now the mainland United States for many thousands of years. This Native American Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples from North America now encompassed by the continental United States, including parts of Alaska and the island state of Hawaii. They comprise a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as intact political communities. The terminology used to population was greatly reduced by disease and warfare after European contact The start of the European colonization of the Americas is typically dated to 1492, although there was at least one earlier colonization effort. The first known Europeans to reach the Americas were the Vikings during the 11th century, who established several colonies in Greenland and one short-lived settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows (51°N) in the. The United States was founded by thirteen British colonies The Thirteen Colonies were part of what became known as British America, a name that was used by Great Britain until the Treaty of Paris recognized the independence of the original thirteen United States of America in 1783. These British colonies in North America rebelled against British rule in 1775, in what is called the American Revolution in located along the Atlantic seaboard The East Coast of the United States, also known as the "Eastern Seaboard", refers to the easternmost coastal states in the central and northern United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. In a geographical sense, the term Eastern Seaboard is widely used; in popular usage, the term "East Coast" is. On July 4, 1776, they issued the Declaration of Independence The United States Declaration of Independence is a statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain were now independent states, and thus no longer a part of the British Empire. Written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration is a formal, which proclaimed their right to self-determination Self-determination is the free choice of one’s own acts without external compulsion; and especially as the freedom of the people of a given territory to determine their own political status. It can also be defined as the ability or power to make decisions for yourself, especially the power of a nation to decide how it will be governed. In other and their establishment of a cooperative union. The rebellious states defeated Great Britain The Kingdom of Great Britain, also known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain, was a sovereign state in northwest Europe, in existence from 1707 to 1801. It was created by the merger of the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England, under the Acts of Union 1707, to create a single kingdom encompassing the whole of the island of Great in the American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War or American War of Independence began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen former British colonies in North America, and concluded in a global war between several European great powers, the first successful colonial war of independence The historical phenomenon of colonisation is one that stretches around the globe and across time, including such disparate peoples as the Hittites, the Incas and the British. European colonialism or Imperialism began in the fifteenth century with the "Age of Discovery", led by Spanish and Portuguese exploration of the Americas, and the.[9] The Philadelphia Convention The Philadelphia Convention took place from May 25 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to address problems in governing the United States of America, which had been operating under the Articles of Confederation following independence from Great Britain. Although the Convention was purportedly intended only to revise the Articles adopted the current United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law of the United States. It is the foundation and source of the legal authority underlying the existence of the United States of America and the federal government of the United States. It provides the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic with a strong central government. The Bill of Rights In the United States, the Bill of Rights is the name by which the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution are known. They were introduced by James Madison to the First United States Congress in 1789 as a series of articles, and came into effect on December 15, 1791, when they had been ratified by three-fourths of the States. Thomas, comprising ten constitutional amendments This is a complete full list of all the ratified and unratified amendments to the United States Constitution which have received the approval of the Congress. The procedure for amending the Constitution is governed by Article V of the original text. There have been many other proposals for amendments to the United States Constitution introduced in guaranteeing many fundamental civil rights and freedoms Legal rights are rights conveyed by a particular polity, codified into legal statutes by some form of legislature (or unenumerated but implied from enumerated rights), and as such are contingent upon local laws, customs, or beliefs. In contrast, natural rights (also called moral rights or unalienable rights) are rights which are not contingent, was ratified in 1791.
In the 19th century, the United States acquired land from France The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America of 828,800 square miles (2,147,000 km2) of the French territory Louisiana in 1803. The U.S. paid 60 million francs ($11,250,000) plus cancellation of debts worth 18 million francs ($3,750,000), a total cost of 15 million dollars for the Louisiana territory, Spain The Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, also known as the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819, settled a border dispute in North America between the United States and Spain. The treaty was the result of increasing tensions between the U.S. and Spain regarding territorial rights at a time of weakened Spanish power in the New World. In addition to ceding, the United Kingdom Oregon Country or Oregon was a predominantly American term referring to a region of the Pacific Northwest of North America. The region was occupied by British and French Canadian fur traders from before 1810, and American settlers from the mid-1830s, with its coastal areas north from the Columbia River frequented by ships from all nations engaged, Mexico, and Russia The Alaska Purchase, historically also referred to as Seward's Folly, was the purchase of Alaska by the United States from the Russian Empire in 1867. The purchase, done at the behest of United States Secretary of State William H. Seward, gained 586,412 square miles of new United States territory. Originally organized as the Department of Alaska,, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North over states' rights and the expansion of the institution of slavery provoked the American Civil War of the 1860s. The North's victory prevented a permanent split of the country and led to the end of legal slavery in the United States. By the 1870s, the national economy was the world's largest.[10] The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a military power. It emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as the sole superpower. The country accounts for two-fifths of global military spending and is a leading economic, political, and cultural force in the world.[11]
Contents |
|
Air America (press release) (blog)
Ed Schultz would make a great United States Senator for the state of North Dakota, and progressives need to convince him as quickly as ...
and more »
163px x 225px | 17.70kB
[source page]
Although there is evidence that Americans played golf in the 17th century the first permanent clubs in the United States were not organized until the late 1880s A dispute between the
Lawrence Solum
Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:54:00 GM
Samuel J. Levine (Pepperdine University School of Law) has posted Miranda, Dickerson, and Jewish Legal Theory: The Constitutional Rule in a Comparative Analytical Framework (Maryland Law Review, Vol. 69, No. 1, 2009) on SSRN.
Q. If the United States has in custody someone who is SURELY a terrorist because of being caught in terrorist activities, how should the US obtain information from them to save innocent lives? Give them a warm bubble bath and hold their hand, or use challenging interrogation techniques?
Asked by TruthSquad - Thu Jan 15 19:36:34 2009 - - 3 Answers - 0 Comments
A. So, these guys have been convicted or just captured and detained. I always thought that it was ridiculous to suppose that the sergeants would have any idea what the generals were up to. But it has been proven that making nice is quicker and more effective than a rubber hose. And the guy who captured Saddam Hussein wrote the book about it. I'm just too lazy to look up the title.
Answered by piegowdealer - Thu Jan 15 19:43:35 2009
