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OK, rev. 1.46 for 2.5 has the fix (now this bug is closed).  I can backport 
to 2.4 and 2.3, but it technically changes the interface and it is not a 
huge issue so I am not going to bother to backport unless people really 
feel it is necessary.

As for the assert use, yeah, that is odd.  =)  But that whole module could 
use a rewrite.  Probably a good thing to do for Python 3.

The reason I suggested the self.__stderr deletion is because there is a 
chance that someone set sys.stderr to a file or some other object and not 
to sys._stderr.  Thought it would be a more thorough fix, but not a big 
thing to me; just happened to notice it.