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Perhaps I've been using it for too long, but I do not find
the error message to misleading.  Also, I like having this
method as simple and lightweight as possible though it may
be worthwhile to add a line to the docs, "If the sequence is
emtpy, raises a TypeError." 

If someone accepts this request, it should implemented as a
try/except rather than an assertion.  That approach would
also let you catch TypeErrors raised is the argument doesn't
define __len__ and __getitem__, for example: 
random.choice(set('abc'))