(OT) I don't have the same issue with Syntax highlighting, and I use jEdit as my main Python editor (Though some of the dedicated Python IDE's have some nice refactoring/code completion stuff, none has the raw editing power of jEdit).
I'm using jEdit 4.3 pre3 - though I don't recall any problems with 4.2 (and it was only a week ago I changed). The Jython plugin enables Structure browsing if you haven't already got it installed. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
