Note the warning about '^' in the documentation for the re search method:

"The optional second parameter pos gives an index in the string where the search is to start; it defaults to 0. This is not completely equivalent to slicing the string; the '^' pattern character matches at the real beginning of the string and at positions just after a newline, but not necessarily at the index where the search is to start."

http://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html#re.RegexObject.search