Authentication session with urllib2

[Ken Seehart]

I'm having some difficulty implementing a client that needs to maintain 
an authenticated https: session.

I'd like to avoid the approach of receiving a 401 and resubmit with 
authentication, for two reasons:

1. I control the server, and it was easy for me to make a url that 
receives a POST with username, password and authenticates the session.  
The server keeps a session correctly when I test with a browser.  This 
part works fine.

2. I don't want to send every request twice.  See 
http://bugs.python.org/issue7159  There's no reason why I should have to 
do this since I have the ability to keep the server simple.

What I would really like to do is send one request with the username and 
password to establish the session, and then make multiple authenticated 
requests where the session information remembers the authentication.

Is there a way to make this happen in python 2.5.2?

Keep in mind that this only needs to work with a particular server which 
I control.  It does not need to function as a general purpose browser.  
The server is powered by Django.

- Ken