ok, if it really does fail in this case (and I agree it seems it could given the way it processes thru the chain of handlers; just me looking at urlllib2 code; not an actual experiment),  I think it can be prevented pretty easily, by passing in our own HTTPHandler that does nothing, in addition to our verification handler.

from the urllib2 docs for `build_opener`:
"Instances of the following classes will be in front of the handlers, unless the handlers contain them, instances of them or subclasses of them: ProxyHandler, UnknownHandler, HTTPHandler, HTTPDefaultErrorHandler, HTTPRedirectHandler, FTPHandler, FileHandler, HTTPErrorProcessor"