Using the Requests library

gistfile1.py

import requests
import codecs

url = 'http://www.instapaper.com/m'
params = {'u': 'http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/30/bn-8-k-microsoft-paying-180m-advance-on-nook-for-windows-8-125m-for-content-tech-acquisition/'}
r = requests.get(url, params=params)

# r.text holds the response from the server. It appears to be unicode in this case.
f = codecs.open("foo.html", mode="w", encoding="UTF-8")
f.write(r.text)