@stoutdesign: i’m not sure it’s a safe patch for people b/c i’m basically overriding the SSL certificate validity check in WP’s HTTP Request class. do you think this could be a potential security risk, even though the SSL is coming from an obviously-trusted source (google)?
based on the little time i looked at it, i think the error is coming from WP’s HTTP code, not yours. but i don’t know b/c i’ve never looked at WP code before last night