by bryanrasmussen | 2025-08-07 05:26:02+00:00
The thing is that it is described as a coding error that is responsible, I have a pretty long history in finding coding errors, and also finding things that people did maliciously.

Some of these things that were removed are things that the current administration would probably find useful if they didn't exist.

I don't disbelieve that it can be a coding error, but I do doubt it just because I am finding it weird to imagine a scenario where this happens.

Arguments against it being malicious:

stuff has also been removed that maybe current administration wouldn't want removed - for example:

>To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

>To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

I think they'd want to leave it in.

Coding error Scenarios:

Parts of Section 8 and Section 9 were removed. What scenario could create this. Doubt it's some sort of DB error given the parts of Section 8 removal.

So I would think some sort of text munging system, perhaps XML or SGML and there were some external entities that could not be resolved. That the whole thing works and doesn't have any sort of leftover bits of text in the current version implies they have some sort of cleanup.

I would have been more expecting to see something like "&sec8_29987; &sec9_complete;" or something like that in the right hand side of the diff but nope.

That would imply external entities are saved somewhere that maybe was not available at generation time, that is to say the end of section 8 and section 9 are currently offline.

That would be a kind of explanation, but of course I doubt it because uh Why?!

Is there some sort of publishing system where these entities are used, then I would expect that articles about that part of Section 8 and Section 9 at https://constitution.congress.gov/ would also have those parts missing in the articles - like there would be a quote and it would instead say "text retrieval error" or something similar.

But then I also doubt it because why just those parts.

And anyway when I look at https://constitution.congress.gov/search/%22section%209%22 it seems like information about Section 9 is still available.

Question: how often has this online version of the Constitution had these problems over the years? Is this the only time this kind of bug has happened.

Has there ever been coding errors when section 8 got repeated.. or similar types of problems.

I mean it's not unheard of that there are rare bugs that happen just the one time that alert you there is an instability in a long running system, but it's not common either hence the use of the word "rare" to describe bugs of this sort.

Obviously I have made a number of assumptions here, for example I assume this system was not redesigned a month ago and is not currently The U.S Constitution - powered by React! It looks to me like a long running system, but maybe I'm wrong.