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Matthew, thanks for the patch.  It gets a little better with 
each update (though it is still in dire need of a spell-check).

The cost/benefit of adding this to the unittest module is not 
clear.  Perhaps, it would be worthwhile to present it on the 
newsgroup to tease out the idea, build a fan club for it, or 
come up with a simpler API.

My biggest issue with the unittest module is that it is already 
too extensive.  One has to read a small book on the subject 
to get started.  The number of doc pages, classes, and 
methods rank it as more complex than most of the net 
modules (with the notable exception of the email package). 
In Beck's TDD book (p. 119), he comments that some 
unittest packages are already too complicated for his tastes.

This patch would make the complexity issue worse.  It takes 
longer to figure out how the use the patch that it does to 
create a small, easy-to-read, special purpose mock object.

Also, I'm concerned that MockObjects tend to create a false 
sense of security in a situation where the actual object 
behavior diverges from the simulated behavior.  Also, to the 
extent that a simulation is simple, it tends to discourage 
adding tests that exercise all the nuances of a real object.  
For example, a MockDatabase may simulate the expected 
replies to some queries but doesn't behave enough like the 
real thing to encourge tests on commits, rollbacks, cache 
flushing, re-ordered tables, etc.

If this doesn't get added to the unittest module, it would 
certainly be worthwhile to post it to the Python Cookbook so 
that advanced users can get to it when they need it.