Does this imply leap second hell, or will we simply be vague about expectations?
IMO, leap seconds should be ignored. Time stands still during a leap second. Consider this a BDFL pronouncement if you wish. :-)
I'd also like to see simple access methods for year, month, day, hours, minutes, and seconds,
The timetuple() method provides access to all of these simultaneously. Isn't that enough? t.year() could be spelled as t.timetuple()[0]. I expect that usually you'd request several of these together anyway, in order to do some fancy formatting, so the timetuple() approach makes sense.
with date parts being one based and time parts being zero based.
I'm not sure what you mean here. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)