But author and Conservative peer Lord Dobbs accused Mr Clegg of inventing a link between constituency boundaries and Lords reform as an excuse to "exact a little retribution" from his coalition partners.
In essence everyone will suffer the fate of professional chess players, who always know when they have lost a game, have an exact numerical rating for their overall performance, and find excuses for failure hard to come by.
"When citizens exercise these rights according to the law, no organization or individual can use any reason or excuse to interfere, and cannot suppress them or exact revenge," he said.
Although it may sound like a bad excuse (but really, it's not), on that exact same evening, I needed to attend a business dinner and couldn't get home on time for dinner with the family.
"Those were her exact words," Sorosky said in asking that the juror be excused.
As understandable as it may be for someone to want to exact sweet revenge on the supremely frustrating claw machine, it's no excuse to put a kid in a potentially dangerous situation.
In this case, though, one could be excused for being wrong, because I don't usually keep exact records on my alcohol consumption, and neither does the federal government (I think).
