In reply to various current discussants: there was a long discussion here (clp) of similar points of view when bool was introduced. In Guido's opinion (and mine, but his counts 100x), the positive benefits of the current implementation are greater than the net positive benefits of a 'pure' type. See
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0285/ tjr -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
