Work around a urllib2 bug in Python < 2.4.2 When urllib2 base64-encodes the password needed for the Proxy-authorization header, it forgets to remove the trailing "\n". Later, a "\r\n" sequence is appended to every header, as required by the standard. Some proxies interpret the resulting "\n\r\n" sequence in the same way as "\r\n\r\n": end of headers. This usually doesn't cause trouble for this request, but when the proxy tries to read the next one, it thinks the request starts with some garbage and returns a "400 - Bad Request" error.