I want a random 32-bit int and do it the obvious way:

lowest, highest = int(-2**31), int(2**31-1)
r = random.randint(lowest, highest)

random.randint throws an exception:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "/usr/lib/python2.2/random.py", line 349, in randint
    return self.randrange(a, b+1)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.2/random.py", line 328, in
randrange
    raise ValueError, "empty range for randrange()"
ValueError: empty range for randrange()