Originally Posted by MoAlpha

In the beginning there was the Word. Then congressional staff wrote the Federal Code. Department and agency lawyers interpret it and tell the agency administrators how to write the policy. Then the next level of administrators interprets the policy. This was a wording change in the policy, brought about by lawyers. They’re probably right, as a matter of jurisprudence, but it’s a reversal of decades of unofficial policy and could not have been handled in a worse way or at a worse time.