Seriously. Every word.

If you ever want to make your eyes bleed, try reading pretty much any section of the US Code.  Seriously, do it.  It's next to impossible to comprehend what the hell the statutes mean most of the time.  I've actually had to sit down and make a chart to attempt to understand just what the hell happened when SCHIP passed and the amendments to the Medicare Secondary Payer provisions went through.  (My life is so freaking interesting, let me tell you)  Hell, there's still a huge fight as to what precisely all of it means and what, exactly, was amended.  Then there's the implementing regulations and oh I have an enormous rant about how Congress is punting legislative authority off to the administrative process.

Actually reading the damn bills may, possibly, prevent some of the worst of this.  No law should leave a person scratching his/her head and saying "But what does it mean?"  It shouldn't.

Reason 12,384,287,003 that people hate lawyers is because lawyers make the simplest sentence complex.  "Don't bang a 12 year old" turns into "In the instance when a child (see 99 USCA 231.99(b)(4)(C)(iv) for definition of "child")[term to be used to mean both male, female, intersexed and/or transgendered] is touched in a sexual manner (see 188 USCA 213.862(a)(4)(D)(ii) for the definition of "touched" and 163 USCA 74.23(b)(ii)) for the definition of "sexual") by a person who exceeds the age of majority for the jurisdiction in which said touching occurred, then such person shall be subject to penalites as set out in 176 USCA 34.53(c)(3)(DD)(ii)(a)."* 

There's no need for all of this complexity.  There's not.  Maybe, possibly, reading the damn bills will prevent that. 

*If it's not obvious, that example and all citations there in are totally made up.

[This post is not to be used in the BFF's ongoing attempt to prove that I'm a wide eyed optimist].

Posted by: alexthechick at 12:13 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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