I found this thread on the CKEditor site that describes the issue:
viewtopic.php?t=23767
it looks like the svc.spellchecker.net servers where blacklisted by google, but they have fixed the problem and are waiting for google to scan their servers again.
for now, the fix is to disable the spell check as you type service.
on your htmleditor page, find the following line:
$CKEditor_config["scayt_autoStartup"] = true;
and change it to:
$CKEditor_config["removePlugins"] = "scayt,wsc";
$CKEditor_config["scayt_autoStartup"] = false;