I disagree with mhammond.  Mark is correct that closing the connection would be wrong, but self.close() in the function in question does *not* close the connection.  Client code is not expected to explicitly call HTTPResponse.read() with an explicit amt argument even when persistent connections are involved.  All that's required is (of course) that you have to read to the end of the current response before you get to read the next response on that connection.

I think Dustin is more or less right in his diagnosis, but I haven't written a patch yet...