At one point lambda was slated for removal in Python 
    3000. Unfortunately no one was able to come up with a 
    better way of providing anonymous functions. And so 
    lambda is here to stay.

    But it is here to stay as-is. Adding support for 
    statements is a non-starter. It would require allowing 
    multi-line lambda expressions which would mean a  
    multi-line expression could suddenly exist. That would  
    allow for multi-line arguments to function calls, for  
    instance. That is just plain ugly.