SSL (https:) access from script

Hello,
Was this ever answered? I am getting the following error from a simple button test. My test position is that it works manually from IE on the same pc running the designer and python 2.7.

urllib2.URLError: <urlopen error (10061, ‘Connection refused’)>

script

import urllib2
import base64

request = urllib2.Request(‘https://url….’)
base64string = base64.encodestring(’%s:%s’ % (‘username’, ‘password’))
request.add_header(“Authorization”, “Basic %s” % base64string)
result = urllib2.urlopen(request)
print result.read()