Legal Code In a Version Control System?

coldmist writes "Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Del.) is on the Senate Finance Committee, which just finished work on the health care bill. The committee recently rejected an amendment which would have required them to post the legislation for public viewing for 72 hours before it went to final vote. Several senators felt that the actual legal code would be too cryptic and complicated to be useful. Carper himself said, 'I don't expect to actually read the legislative language because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I've ever read in my life.' So, why don't they put it in SVN (or some similar version control system) where people can tkdiff the changes (i.e. new legislation is in a branch) or output a patchset? If a bill is passed, it's merged into the trunk. It just seems so logical to me, yet I can't find any mention of doing this on the web. What do you think?"

Comments

Re:If the legal code is too confusing

[Hognoxious]

They tried programming in plain language ... It was called C080L.

Re:Too early yet

[commodore64_love]

>>>o you're really saying that if you are in a bus accident and your wallet gets lost...

I really hate strawman arguments. If that's what I had meant to say, then I would have said it. NO. I'm saying people should still get mandatory healthcare from hospitals, just like now, but that the cost will not be paid by the government if they are illegal residents or foreign visitors. They will have to pay the bill themselves.