So you are upset that he did the right thing? This land was stolen and none of these names are what the original people (some of my ancestors) called them.

Goodness but spurgeonryan got one hell of a spanking didn't he :) Hopefully he will learn to think things through a little better before turning on his outrage machine in future.

I recommend he stays away from Fox news.

I've yet to understand how this is a problem. Who the fuck cares what it's called (aside from the people that live near it)? Does this affect you? No. This is complaining to complain.

On an unrelated note, my friend decided to start going by his legal name rather than the nickname he started using several years back. I'm pissed the fuck off. When I met him, he already started going by the nickname, and I liked that more.

@ bold -  None of this would happen, as no country can claim ownership of any celestial body outside of the Earth.

Back on topic, look around the world. Mumbai. Beijing. Zimbabwe. Two cities and a country I can think of off the top of my head that have been renamed, and people get used to it. *shrug*

I doubt that most of the people complaining about Mt. McKinley ever heard of it, including the vast majority of the Republican politicians that were grandstanding over the issue, and almost none of them cared about it until this came up. Alaska has been calling it Denali for 40 years. Why should a bunch of people who have never set foot in Alaska have a dog in this fight? If Ohio's politicians are so angry they can find something in Ohio to name after McKinley. Boehner can name some hill in Cinci after McKinley if he feels that strongly about it.

As far as this topic is concerned...

saying that something existed before a person was in office apparently makes it impossible for that person to make it worse.  Gotcha.  Way to ignore my point since you have no real response then change the subject to something random like gun control

That..... is actually a realy good question. There's absolutely no good reason for America to keep the imperial system.

Well text books are updated all the time (if you mean school books), and there's no need to update normal books. I assume it would tell you what unit is being used in whatever book it is, so that shouldn't be much of a problem. Signs would have show both imperial and metric system (while specifying unit of course). Anyway, like you said, it's happening slowly but surely, but it's more happening internally. new equipment is calibrated in metric, etc. Eventually, most of the US will have made the switch, and the only thing remaining would be to make it official.

And I have no doubt that if the government put their mind to it, it could be done in a presedential term, it's just not exactly high on their list of priorities (not to mention those that want to keep it because reasons).