The House is one of two chambers that make up Congress. The House is a representational chamber by population, whereas it's counterpart the Senate is fixed at 2 members per state.

The House is often where bills originate, and the Senate is the latter half of the process.

> The House is often where bills originate,

As is the Senate. (Bills for raising revenue must originate in the House, but otherwise they can and do go in any order.)

>The House is often where bills originate, and the Senate is the latter half of the process.

Yup, seems like the Senate is where bills perish.

The Senate was designed from the beginning to be an obstacle. If you can't get both a majority of people, and a majority of states to agree then it should stay a law at the state level instead of the federal.

More politically important, The Speaker is 3rd in line to become president if something happens to the president and vice president.

I don't know what Parliament is, but as the name suggests it must have something to do with shelf stable dairy products.

Parliament disambiguation page on Wikipedia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_(disambiguation)

No, Parliament is a brand of cigarettes.

You’re thinking of Winston. Parliament is a funk band.

Parliament are the people who live in the Parliament House and make HP Sauce.

> I'm choosing to interpret this as a sarcastic jab at HN's US-centric tendencies

It wasn't a sarcastic jab.

> willful ignorance

Do you expect everybody in the world to know how the US government works?

> It would take two seconds to look this up.

I looked it up immediately after looking up Nancy Pelosi on Google. This is what I got (Wikipedia):

"The United States House of Representatives, usually referred to as the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber."

Right. Now I have to look up "US congress", "US senate", "US upper and lower chamber"... Didn't want to bother with it.

So I typed in a simple explanation.

This is the honest truth. Believe it if you want to.

(I actually got a better understanding of what US House of Representatives is by reading other comments here.)

FWIW, there's also "simple.wikipedia.org", which has plain-English definitions for many of the most popular entries in regular Wikipedia. Here[1] is the entry for "House of Representatives".

> Didn't want to bother with it.

I suspect this is the root cause of the problem. I could see why you'd post such a question here if you had tried Googling, found no relevant results, and ran out of options for doing the work yourself. But that doesn't sound like what happened. Instead, it sounds like you had the ability to continue Googling, but decided to let others do your research for you. That's like saying your time is more valuable than other people's time. Do you see the problem there?

1. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Representatives

The fastest way to get an accurate answer is to post the wrong answer on a forum with a bunch of nerds :)

> Here[1] is the entry for "House of Representatives".

Thank you for taking the time. Much appreciated.

> Instead, it sounds like you had the ability to continue Googling, but decided to let others do your research for you.

No. I did not decide to let others do the research.

I simply stopped doing the research. Didn't want to find out more, because deep knowlege of the House of Representatives does not add much value to my life. And neither is it a topic I'm interested in (like, I have spent hours reading and learning about comets because that's something I'm interested in, even though it too doesn't provide much tangible value to my life).

> That's like saying your time is more valuable than other people's time.

Wrong. It's like saying I don't want to spend too much time on this.

I never asked anybody else to do anything on my behalf. Frankly I never expected this to upset people.

Yeah, but it would also cause all other non US readers to do the same. It is nice to have explanation here.

I don't know. I'm not an American and I know what the house of representatives is, I also know what the chinese national congress is and who is the president of France and who is Modi. I suggest it is a good thing to invest some time into reading international news, because so much of what influences our daily life is determined by international politics and the big players in it.

> Right. Now I have to look up "US congress", "US senate", "US upper and lower chamber"... Didn't want to bother with it.

I mean yeah, this does look a lot like what I would call "willful ignorance." Of course there's nothing wrong with needing to look up words, especially in one's non-native language, but anyone could feign needing to exhaustively depth-first search words in the dictionary to understand any concept regardless of how basic it is. Consider that for any explanation someone gives you in an HN comment you could also just as easily say "now I need to look up every word in that comment, and every word in the definition of each of those words, and every word in each of those definitions, etc.

> I mean yeah, this does look a lot like what I would call "willful ignorance."

The meaning I came up with in my original comment wasn't wrong, was it?

My goal was to find out who Nancy Pelosi is. Finding out what's House of Representatives wasn't the top priority.

I don't understand why you're upset with me not digging deeper into what the House of Representatives is.

> Consider that for any explanation someone gives you in an HN comment you could also just as easily say "now I need to look up every word in that comment, and every word in the definition of each of those words, and every word in each of those definitions, etc.

Slippery slope fallacy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

It's not the slippery slope fallacy, because I'm not saying anything about incremental steps inevitably leading towards anything. You complained that looking something up doesn't work because you then need to look up all the words you encounter in the definition. I pointed out that the same could be true for any explanation regardless of its source (and likely would be true, because words like "congress" would almost certainly feature in anyone's explanation).

Well, Congress is a term used by a number of countries, not just the US, for their legislative bodies. The main difference between a Congress and a Parliament as far as I recall is that Parliament has a combined legislative and executive role, where Congress is solely legislative.

Senate and the nuance of our bicameral legislature is going to be more bespoke, like me having to look up the House of Commons vs. House of Lords in the UK.

after VP Kamala Harris. Pence has been dispensed.

Dispenced.

He's no longer in the running.

One might say he was in the offing for a while towards the end.

No need, I’ll get the door myself.

Pence got really lucky that day, as did the United States. That could have gone entirely different if not for a few people keeping a clear head.

One of which, to his credit, appears to have been Pence himself.

Yes, absolutely. I'm not a fan, to put it mildly, but on that day he did the United States a great service.

Sort of... I didn't get the impression he stayed at the Capitol because he thought it was the right thing for the country, but instead because he felt staying was the better option for his own power and legacy. I mean, I'll take it, but I'd prefer our leaders were slightly more principled than that.

Much better than the alternative.

You mean Kamala Harris

In France you have a strong president that combines the role of a monarch and prime minister, but the role of "constitutional gatekeeper" is shared by the Constitutional Council, Supreme Court and Administrative Court. The latter three are actually entities that use their power.

The idea of having two houses of parliament is common in most large countries, and it is also common for those houses to be segregated from the executive (EU etc...).

The US is a political and cultural mess, but a lot of those issues aren't inherently due to the political system involved.

What's your point? That you disapprove of the concept of separation of powers? That you disapprove of the idea of the executive president?

Neither of these are exactly unusual or extreme positions w.r.t systems of government.

Or is this just a whine about the U.S.?

It's just that when a majority of the American people want certain changes in policy, they are not able to get them passed even though the country is a democracy.

The parent comment just gave reasons for that (among other things).

The United States is not, strictly speaking, a democracy. The people don't make decisions. They elect people who make decisions, thus it is a republic.

I hear a lot of people in technical (predominantly US) forums make this distinction. Where does the perception that Republic or democracy are conflicting concepts come from?

Republic and democracy are orthogonal concepts. A republic is a form of government where the head of state is elected. So it is in conflict with a monarchy, where the head of state is passed by inheritance. In democracies decisions are made by the people through various means, like elections. In fact many (most?) republics are democracies, where the head of state is elected by the people. The US is one of them, the "the original" one Athens was as well.

However there are republics where the head of state is e.g. elected by a clique of oligarchs or the military. They are undemocratic republics.

A representative democracy is still a democracy.

Don’t forget that the President and Senate are both elected on the basis of land, rather than population. And the presidential allotment is winner-takes-all for most of those land areas. Definitely doesn’t disenfranchise large population centers, it’s fine.

The patches to the constitution aren't as deeply thought out as the original one. The Senate wasn't even an elected institution until 100 years ago, whether that is better or worse than an appointed system is mostly a false dilemma as there are more than two options. Pointing out that our constitution isn't really geared for the current process is a first step of getting more inspiration on how it could function.

When you patch one aspect it throws the other aspects out of whack.

"Basis of land"? LOL. Are you referring to the 50 individual state governments that make up the United States of America? Most Europeans don't know this, but the first government in the world to ban slavery was the U.S (Vermont). The US isn't one homogeneous zone. There are 50 individual governments that write their own legislation, have their own taxation systems and have military's (state guards). California is free to create their abortion access legislation as is Texas. Many states in the US legalized Weed despite the fact that the federal government has some bizarre policy in place (which isn't constitutional).

I hate to burst your bubble but Pope Zachary ended slavery in Rome in the 740s, banning the slave trade and manumitting all slaves already present by purchase of the church & state.

I think they were making a jab at the Electoral College system in USA.

> a product that would taste good on breakfast cereal but is also an effective roof insulation

I'm curious- do you have something particular in mind?

This kind of a take is ready for flames.