Sarah Palin 'believed Queen was in charge of British forces in Iraq'

[Filuwaúrdjan]

'The Crown' is a formal term that is archaic in everyday usage.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

And it appears in my less than 30 year old college textbook.

I would expect formal terms to appear in textbooks. They have a habit of doing that.

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Either the government of the day in a political sense, or central government in general (including civil service functionaries).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In the US, "the government" almost never refers to the "government of the day."  It refers to all aspects of the governing body, down to the local level and would include low level civil servants, like the clerk at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

o.k.

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Or we could just ask the Antique Monk.