why are my SELECTs in transaction?

Inflight=# select usename from pg_user;
 usename
---------
 fc
 luser
 ping
(3 rows)

Inflight=# select * from badtable;
ERROR:  Relation "badtable" does not exist
Inflight=# select usename from pg_user;
ERROR:  current transaction is aborted, queries ignored until end of
transaction block


So at this point all selects are screwed unless I issue a ROLLBACK;
Why?  Is there a way for SELECTs (or all SQL) statement that fail to NOT
have this behaviour?