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I'm not sure I understand you Rietveld comment right Terry.
We can get rid of _have_ssl (this is implementation detail and shouldn't be required) and just try import ssl.
try:
 import ssl
except ImportError:
 ssl = None
If ssl is not None but nntplib.NNTP_SSL doesn't exist the NetworkedNNTP_SSLTests tests will failed:
======================================================================
ERROR: setUpClass (test.test_nntplib.NetworkedNNTP_SSLTests)
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Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "/home/serhiy/py/cpython/Lib/test/test_nntplib.py", line 298, in setUpClass
 cls.server = cls.NNTP_CLASS(cls.NNTP_HOST, timeout=TIMEOUT, usenetrc=False)
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable
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This doesn't different from a case when some exception is raised in NNTP_SSL constructor.
We can add a separate test in MiscTests:
 @unittest.skipUnless(ssl, 'requires SSL support')
 def test_ssl_support(self):
 self.assertTrue(hasattr(nntplib, 'NNTP_SSL'))