[blml] re claim

[Ed Reppert]

On Dec 31, 2007, at 2:43 PM, Eric Landau wrote:

> In a spontaneous fit of insanity that went unnoticed by the rest of
> the committee out of "carelessness"?  Are they so careless as to go
> around striking words from their drafts at random without bothering
> to check to see whether they are thus affecting the meaning of what
> they had written? I refuse to accept that.  If they changed the
> wording, they had to have at least *thought* they had a reason for
> doing so, even if they can no longer tell us what that reason might
> have been.
>
> When they chose to strike "or claim" from their draft, either they
> thought it affected the meaning of the law and decided to
> deliberately alter its meaning, or they thought it didn't affect the
> meaning of the law and decided to deliberately obfuscate its
> meaning.  It would be nothing short of egregiously insulting to every
> member of that committee to assume the latter.

I have no intention of insulting anyone - I'm simply speculating  
since, like most everyone else here, I have no *evidence* of their  
thought processes. I can certainly envision a last meeting, running  
late, trying to dot the i's and cross the t's, and get out in time  
for dinner (or whatever) wherein this kind of "carelessness" might  
well happen - and I'm not singling out any particular deliberating  
body in that.