Today in How Civics Education is Going Down the Toilet

The trivia quiz on the dry-erase board at the coffeeshop today was, "Which is the largest branch of the US Government?"  I thought for a second and said, "I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it's The Congress." (That would be the Legislative Branch, btw).  The little college girl behind the bar gave me this very sweet "gosh I'm sorry" look and said, "No, I'm afraid not.  It's the Department of Defense."  I said, "Well, I'm pretty sure there are only three branches of the Government, and I don't think the DoD is one of them-- it's part of the Executive Branch, and takes up the largest chunk of our budget, which I guess you could say makes the Executive Branch the biggest in one way... but it's definitely not its own branch." "Well," she replied, "the trivia card set we get these questions from says it's the Department of Defense, so I guess they lied, haha!"  She was very nice, so I said "I know, right?" and paid for my coffee-- because really, whatever.  Then the next guy in line looks at the question and says to her, "Is it 'The Pentagon'?"  she gave him the same sweet smile and replied, "No, I'm sorry, it's the Department of Defense."  Sigh.