aw :( I have a githook that converts the `README.rst` from GitHub-style RST to a PyPI-style RST-syntax `README.txt`. if you're not publishing to PyPI you can just symlink `README.rst` to `README.txt` and it should work (or even have a blank `README.txt`)!

Long story short: please revert this line, and i'll merge your branch in to master since it's pretty much a hotfix :)