timestamp handling in postgres 7.1 behaves strange

Martin Wrtele (martin(dot)wuertele(at)factline(dot)com) reports a bug with a severity of 1
The lower the number the more severe it is.

Short Description
timestamp handling in postgres 7.1 behaves strange

Long Description
version: 7.1release-4 of debian/woody

when comparing timestamps i always get
ERROR: Bad timestamp external representation 'm'

Sample Code
this works:
select timestamp (content) from factversionelement where factid=100311 and elementname='newsdate';
timestamp
------------------------
2010-01-02 16:00:00+01
(1 row)

this does not:
select factid from factversionelement where factid=100311 and elementname='newsdate' and timestamp (content) >= '2001-08-08';
ERROR: Bad timestamp external representation 'm'

this also does not:
select factid from factversionelement where factid=100311 and elementname='newsdate' and timestamp (content) >= timestamp('2001-08-08');
ERROR: Bad timestamp external representation 'm'

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