(As I recall) in python-dev mailing list Ray claimed he could clean up a
cited active state recipe to address this issue.  He succeeded to the
extent I'm aware---he's the author of
http://code.activestate.com/recipes/576685/.

I haven't used the redundant >, >= comparisons operators in code since
1981.  The chances of simplifying python by removing them from the
language are None, but the mistake predates python by 10**n years, where
(3 <= n <= 7) or (7 >= n >= 3).