[LEAPSECS] Politics

[Gerard Ashton]

 From what I've seen, both politicians and constituents tend to neglect 
measurement issues
in general (except adoption of the metric system) and time keeping in 
particular. In the case
of calendars, however, there has been a certain amount of friction in 
the religious arena
(for example, Gregorian calendar vs. Revised Julian calendar, which are 
the same for the
next few hundred years, the same sort of time span that contributors 
tend to worry
about, for different reasons).

So a question that comes to my mind is that if a change were proposed 
that would
change the calendar away from a count of observed days, so that 
eventually DUT > 1 day, which,
if any, government would have the authority to make the change. Taking 
the US
as an example, the constitution gives congress the power to "To coin 
Money, regulate the
Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and 
Measures".
So is the calendar a standard of measure? If not does the US federal 
government
have authority to regulate it? Maybe it is a power that belongs to the 
50 states.

Gerard Ashton