When running urllib2 and getting a BadStatus from an http server, this error is raised:

  File "/var/www/pinax-env/pline/apps/page/models.py", line 303, in render
    content = urllib2.urlopen(self.url,timeout=10).read()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 124, in urlopen
    return _opener.open(url, data, timeout)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 389, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 407, in _open
    '_open', req)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 367, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 1146, in http_open
    return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPConnection, req)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 1119, in do_open
    r = h.getresponse()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/httplib.py", line 974, in getresponse
    response.begin()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/httplib.py", line 391, in begin
    version, status, reason = self._read_status()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/httplib.py", line 355, in _read_status
    raise BadStatusLine(line)
httplib.BadStatusLine

Because urllib2 doesn't catch it with this:

lines 1116-1120

try:
    h.request(req.get_method(), req.get_selector(), req.data, headers)
    r = h.getresponse()
except socket.error, err: # XXX what error?
    raise URLError(err)

It is not caught anywhere else and the call blows up unless I make a special exception for all httplib exceptions.  The specific url that blew this up is:

http://phoenix.untd.com/oasx/rqst/type=sx/rdb=8203014d740000555355533a415a2d2d2d2d2d2d2d2d2d2d0100001d494a0901000000000000/version=3/origin=uol/isp=et_cau