IE 7/8 uncaught fatal exception when attribute selector parses malformed href string

[xtof]

jQuery code was:

jQuery('a[href$=.pdf]').addClass('pdf');

fatal exception on this line. tried iterating the individual anchor tags and looking at their hrefs using just DOM functions; discovered one was malformed, specifically:

href="​http://3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows"

IE 7/8 (did not test 6) failed on this link any time I accessed this href (e.g., "var foo = element.href;" threw fatal exception), with one exception - typeof element.href returns "unknown" for IE7/8

[dmethvin]

Can you reopen with a complete test case that throws the error?