[MalPearce]

Nope, but I’ve been on many, many other talkboards in the past (I was on CNN for a long time but that was donkey’s years ago) so it’s possible you’ve seen me elsewhere.

[MalPearce]

Incidentally, I just posted on another thread, and it reminded me of something I'd forgotten about.

England and Scotland are "constituent countries" of the United Kingdom (so both are states within a sovereign nation state). Occasionally, the default assumption of a Brit who doesn't know better, might be along the lines of:

• The USA is a sovereign nation, so is the UK
• The USA has 50 states, the UK has four
• Texas used to be an independent nation state, so was Scotland
• Texas has its own laws and courts, so does Scotland
  therefore
  
• a Brit can think of Texas' position within the USA, to be roughly equivalent to Scotland's position within the UK.

It's obviously not a perfect analogy by any stretch of the imagination, but as a starting point it does occasionally prevent some really stupid assumptions from being made.

How annoyed would you guys be, if a British poster appeared on Free Republic, asking why Arnold Schwarzenegger or Eric Holder wasn't being held to account over some decision taken by the Texas State Supreme Court?

I guess a lot, but then you could say the same about the reaction of English posters on an English talkboard, to being asked by an American why the English Parliament wasn't being held to account over the release of the Lockerbie bomber. In either situation, that analogy would've helped.