Thanks for the response.  It appears the bug was already reported in a slightly different context.  https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/11216

On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 6:24 AM, Richard Eisenberg <rae@cs.brynmawr.edu> wrote:
Sounds like a bug to me.... and one I may have run into at some point. Would you care to file a bug report?

Thanks!
Richard

> On Dec 20, 2016, at 3:53 AM, Chris Smith <cdsmith@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hey everyone,
>
> Can someone explain to me by GHC 8 causes list comprehension bindings to desugar to use 'fail', when RebindableSyntax is enabled in GHC 8?  Note that I do not have monad comprehensions enabled.  If I define fail, everything works (apparently regardless of what I define fail to do?!?), but I'd like to understand why it's necessary.
>
> Thanks,
> Chris
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