I've created a patch that adds some common functional programming tools to functools. I've made the patch to work against Python 3.2, but that may be a bit aggressive. If so, then I can adapt it to work with 3.3.
I also wouldn't be opposed to writing some of these in C if there's a performance need.
The functions I added are:
* flip - flip the first two arguments of a function
* const - return a function that always returns the same thing
* compose - compose multiple functions together
* identity - returns what is passed in to it
* trampoline - calls a function and then calls any returned functions.