Due to paranoid Sharepoint administrators we have the need clone an existing list over the SOAP API ourselves..Is there an (easy) way to accomplish this? We already have a Python based API for accessing the list items and field descriptions over SOAP - I am not sure if this is enough for create a 1:1 copy ourselves...is there a better more straight forward way?
There is not an "easy" way to do this.  You would have to retrieve the schema from the web service, and modify it before instantiating it somewhere else.  It depends a bit on where the clone operation is destined, but you will have to change the schema in some way to some degree, regardless of the destination.  
Beyond that, it depends on how customized the list is.  If you are using custom content types, you'll have to clone them as well, with all the same difficulties.  If it has custom views, you'll have to do the same trick with them.  If you have custom forms for your views, I think you're hosed.  I don't know of any way to get those forms from the web service interface.
Cloning a list (definition and items) over SOAP?