Python script executed via cron is not accidentally executed

I have a simple python script to fetch tweets and cache them to disk, which is configured to run every two minutes via cron.

*/2 * * * * (date ; /usr/bin/python /path/get_tweets.py) >> /path/log/get_tweets.log 2>&1

      

        
        
        
      

    

The script runs successfully most of the time. However, the script fails every time. In addition to other logging, I added a simple print statement above the meat of the script, and nothing but the output from the start date command is logged.

#!/usr/bin/python
# Script for Fetching Tweets and then storing them as an HTML snippet for inclusion using SSI

print "Starting get_tweets.py"

import simplejson as json
import urllib2
import httplib
import re
import calendar
import codecs
import os
import rfc822
from datetime import datetime
import time
import sys
import pprint


debug = True 

now = datetime.today()
template = u'<p class="tweet">%s <span class="date">on %s</span></p>'
html_snippet = u''
timelineUrl = 'http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name=gcorne&count=7'
tweetFilePath = '/path/server-generated-includes/tweets.html'
if(debug): print "[%s] Fetching tweets from %s." % (now, timelineUrl)

def getTweets():
    request = urllib2.Request(timelineUrl)
    opener = urllib2.build_opener()
    try:
        tweets = opener.open(request)
    except:
        print "[%s] HTTP Request %s failed." % (now, timelineUrl)
        exitScript()
    tweets = tweets.read()
    return tweets

def exitScript():
    print "[%s] Script failed." % (now)
    sys.exit(0)


tweets = getTweets()
now = datetime.today()
if(debug): print "[%s] Tweets retrieved." % (now)
tweets = json.loads(tweets)

for tweet in tweets:
    text = tweet['text'] + ' '
    when = tweet['created_at']
    when = re.match(r'(\w+\s){3}', when).group(0).rstrip()
    # print GetRelativeCreatedAt(when)
    # convert links
    text = re.sub(r'(http://.*?)\s', r'<a href="\1">\1</a>', text).rstrip()
    #convert hashtags
    text = re.sub(r'#(\w+)', r'<a href="http://www.twitter.com/search/?q=%23\1">#\1</a>', text)
    # convert @ replies
    text = re.sub(r'@(\w+)', r'@<a href="http://www.twitter.com/\1">\1</a>', text)
    html_snippet += template % (text, when) + "\n"

#print html_snippet

now = datetime.today()
if(debug): print "[%s] Opening file %s." % (now, tweetFilePath)
try:
    file = codecs.open(tweetFilePath, 'w', 'utf_8')
except:
    print "[%s] File %s cound not be opened." % (now, tweetFilePath)
    exitScript()

now = datetime.today()
if(debug): print "[%s] Writing %s to disk." % (now, tweetFilePath)
file.write(html_snippet)

now = datetime.today()
if(debug): print "[%s] Finished writing %s to disk." % (now, tweetFilePath)
file.close()
sys.exit(0)

      

        
        
        
      

    

Any ideas? VPS system works with Centos 5.3 using python 2.4.

Update: I've added the entire script to avoid confusion.