Given that extensions call these APIs, I find it highly risky to
disable these checks in any version of the Python runtime and
am -1 on such a change.

Using assert() in C is a pretty bad alternative, since this crashes
the whole process. It should really only be used where no other
means of error handling are possible. Python's exception mechanism
is a much better way to signal and handle such errors at the
application level.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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