You are most welcome Brett. I am just starting to contribute with this doc fix. Didn't think a small detail in it will generate such a long debate in the python-committers mailing list. 

Is there a plan in action for 'fixing' Misc/NEWS. I now realize that this change is too small to warrant an entry there, however, as someone new to the list, I simply followed http://docs.python.org/devguide/patch.html. Doing a make patchcheck warns about no changes to Misc/NEWS. 

IMHO it would be great if this tool can look at the files changed (or maybe at-least just the directory, or even, simply number of lines modified) and decide if an entry is required in Misc/News. Of-course this is from my perspective. I would like to get your view on this and help about the solution if possible.