After a great deal of head banging with the PLSS geocoder API, I think I finally got it working, sort of Here is the gist

http://www.geocommunicator.gov/findld/findld.asmx?op=LDToGeoRSS2

The string format it wants is as follows:
CO 06 TOWNSHIP 50N RANGE 750W SEC 15 ALL;

(MORE HEADBANGING)

This works:

import urllib

LegalDescriptions = ['MS 10 TOWNSHIP 1N R3W SEC 6 ALL;']

for LegalDescription in LegalDescriptions:
params = urllib.urlencode({'LegalDescription': LegalDescription, 'PolygonFormat': "eVertices"})
f = urllib.urlopen("http://206.16.47.170//FindLD/FindLD.asmx/FindLD", params)
polydata = f.read()
polydata = polydata.replace("NaN", " 0") # Add Z coordinate
print polydata
posted by Lloyd at 2:30 PM