I mean... do you really want to have to guess whether congress.gov is run by the government, or some random country which decided to sell of .gov TLDs for extra cash?

Or, potentially more deceptively to consumers, "healthcare.gov", etc.

is it really so bad to do what everyone not in the US does and add an extra 3 characters? .gov.us; SOLVED

I agree this is a problem worth solving. But shouldn't it be solved for every country, not just the US?

As a non-US citizen, I find it strange that matters of global internet governance are discussed with apparently mostly arguments about US-specific issues.

As a US citizen, I find it strange as well. But our Republican Party seems to believe we're special and should be treated differently. We aren't and we shouldn't be.

The other option is not giving it over to some random country. As I understand it, the other option would be giving the assignment of top-level domains to ITU or some similar agency within UN, which would then delegate .gov and .mil and other things to US.

The same people who would have problems with "some random country" would have even more problems with the UN.

I'm generally less critical of the UN, but I would agree that the UN is pretty much the last body that should be invested with any sorts of power.

Agree, I have no problem with this. By not limiting these to government uses and ownership, you are only opening the door for malicious websites to fool users...