Amazing.

Common trick during Landlord/Tenant negotiations is for the Tenant's attorney to repunctuate clauses. After several revisions, new punctuation in, old punctuation out, the original meaning becomes undecipherable. "Why is this in here? -- Let's just take it out because it was superceded by this (more favorable for the tenant) clause."

A trained mind can run circles around clerks any day of the week.

"So (1) the version signed by the President is not the version passed by both houses of Congress. Hmm... so is it law?"

No. The President's signature doesn't make a document a law. The checks he writes out signs are not law. What makes a signed bill a law is the fact that it was passed by Congress. And if what he signed wasn't passed by Congress, then it's just a piece of paper with some words and his signature on it...nothing more.

Think about it this way - both houses of congress passed the bill with the correct wording. Assuming the president never signed it, it would go into law 10 days later anyhow, unless congress adjourned within those ten days.

So when was this bill passed by both houses, and how long thereafter did congress remain in session?

If the president signed a defective bill, we could consider the whole signing ceremony to be void, and the bill to have passed as if he did not sign it.

It would go into effect 10 days after it was sent to the president for his approval. Since he was never sent a correct version of the bill, one could easily argue that the clock hasn't started running on those 10 days yet.

Shit happens when no one reads the bills.

Now days no one thinks they have to.

Government never does anything right. If goernment were in chrage of making wheels, we'd have square wheels. We wouldn't get anywhere but we'd be safe.

Ban government!

The clerks also outlawed sling shots in NJ. The story was that the clerk didn't know what a slUng shot (a weight on the end of a cord or chain) was, and so "corrected" the "typo".

Dennis the Menace, brought to Justice in NJ.

The difference between that pattern and the one the president signed was that the clerk's mistake was performed in the text before the final legislative vote, rather than after, and so it's considered "good law".

There's LOTS of 6 unprosecuted year old felons running around NJ, that's fer sure.

There needs to be an sha512 checksum of every bill. The checksum needs to be announced before every vote. And the president needs to include a few handwritten digits of the checksum after the president's signature. This way it would be impossible for the law to be varied in the slightest way from what was passed or signed.

For those unfamiliar with what a checksum is, a checksum is a mathematical calculation done on every character of a document such that the result of the calculation will change if the document is changed. For example a simple checksum would be to assign each letter of the alphabet a number and add up all the letters in the document. If one letter changes then the sum of the letters will change. The problem with such a simple checksum is that it can't detect some simple changes such as moving a word within the document. Cryptographic checksums like sha512 use a sophisticated calculation designed so that nobody in the world can figure out how to create any fake document that has the same checksum as the original document. Thus no change can be made to the document without the change being detected.

Dude.

We can't even get people to read the damned bills they're signing. Generating crytpo hashes is right out.

:)

GeekWithA.45: I know you're joking, but for people new to crypto hashes, it wouldn't be any extra burden for the legislators, and it would only be an insignificant or very small burden to the legislative assistants.

Actually it might be less of a burden because when it is necessary to determine if changes had been made, it might be much quicker and easier and more reliable.

Missing the point.
1) Does it expand their power?
2) Does it screw their opposition?
--Not interested.

This is waaaay to close to "being held accountable for personal actions" to be adopted.

They don't want more accountability. They want less. They don't want to know when a bill changes, they want to know they CAN change a bill without being caught.

Besides, crypto-hashing is electronic, they're not. I'd be willing to bet they would want to use quill pens before they used electronic checksums.

You're thinking altruistically. They don't.

A president could singlehandedly force the use of checksums. The president could just declare that all bills without hashes would be vetoed. Whether a president would want to is another question.

If the bill that passed Congress isn't the one passed by Congress, then how is it law? The bigger questions is who enforces this?

Don't blame the clerks, after a bill is enrolled (written on parchment) it still has to be confirmed by a joint committee of the legislature:

When bills are enrolled they shall be examined by a joint committee for that purpose, who shall carefully compare the enrollment with the engrossed bills as passed in the two Houses, and, correcting any errors that may be discovered in the enrolled bills, make their report forthwith to their respective Houses.

"Work, work, work, work, work -- Hello, boys! Did you miss me?"
- Governor William J. Le Petomane

Read it again. Maybe it says we should lock congress in a cage and run over it with a train.

What are the odds it was done intentionally? Afer all, the staff works for the Democrats.

Critic, do you have a membership at Wrong Planet?

(I don't, but do belong to AFF.) You seem to be one of us. Stop trying to make the normals see sense. Never happen.