[ldolse]

I found a solution, not sure if it's the best one, but it's working. Figured out how to initialize a new cookiejar, copied the good cookie into that. Opened the bad page (corrupting the cookiejar) and replaced the corrupted cookiejar with the clean one.

    import copy

    goodcookies = br._ua_handlers['_cookies'].cookiejar
    clean_cj = mechanize.CookieJar()
    cookies_to_copy = []
    for cookie in goodcookies:
        copied_cookie = copy.deepcopy(cookie)
        cookies_to_copy.append(copied_cookie)
    for copied_cookie in cookies_to_copy:
        clean_cj.set_cookie(copied_cookie)
    
    # request that corrupts the cookiejar
    br.open(q_init_search)
    
    br.set_cookiejar(clean_cj)