The Royale. Picking one sentence to pieces.

[SpyOne]

(most of post redacted due to redundancy: others said much the same thing, and I'm not trying to dun the point here.)

I did want to say that I don't think the selection of Australia was entirely random: Australia is geographically separated from other countries. This makes it a bit more analogous.

 

[SpyOne]

As a American citizen I would perfer that the District of Columbia never became a state, two senators and a repersentative from such a small population.

Dude: DC has nearly the same number of people as Alaska. IIRC, the population requirement for statehood is 40,000, so either could be made into a dozen states, giving DC 24 senators.
The thing is, as the founders envisioned Washington DC, nobody was supposed to live there. (Well, nobody who would vote, anyway). Everyone who had a residence there would officially reside somewhere else. That's not a bad system, really, and it's a shame we didn't stick to it.
The reason DC was seperate from the rest of the nation was so that no state could claim the prestige of having the US Capitol. I think that's a principle worth preserving, even if we wind up having to make it like the Vatican: a tiny thing completely surrounded by another city.

 

[Rush Limborg]

"The Royale"
DATA: "Is this significant, sir?" (Holds up a spacesuit on a hangar)
RIKER: "American."
DATA: "Fifty two stars sir. Places it between 2033 and 2079 AD."

What can we draw from this short scene?

Well, at least Riker recognizes the flag. How many of you would recognize a flag from three hundred years ago?

Not unheard of. I'd recognize the old English flag, which was replaced by the Union Jack some many centuried ago.

Data uses 2079 AD, not 2079 CE. Indicating that "CE" is a passing fad.

Thank goodness for that, too. (Bloody PC nonsense....)

BTW--wasn't it Riker who said the years?

From Data's statement there was only one time period when America had fifty-two states.
In 2079 the state count rose above (or dropped below) 52.

Well, seccession is kinda forbidden, as of the Civil War--so it's probably that more states were added.

I believe Puerto Rico is the best candidate for state number 51, any thoughts on state number 52?

Well, after Puerto Rico, there's Guam, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands...I think that's it, maybe more.

D.C. is out. It's kinda implied in the Constitution that the District is supposed to be set apart from the States.

How big will America ultimately be in the future?

A lot of the older novels refer to the U.S. as the United States of North America--"NorthAm" for short--so I'd imagine it's supposed to dominate the continent in the future.

Picard indicates during "The Defector" that in the 24th century Riker is a American. Is that how Riker identified the flag?

Well, I'd say, considering how important the USA has been in world history, I wouldn't rule out a simple knowledge of basic Earth history.