How to override HTTP request verb in GAE
Thats Arachnid for your response. Pointing me to the source of the framework was really helpful. Last I looked the source wasn't there(there was only .pyc), maybe it changed with the new version of the SDK. For my situation I think overriding WSGIApplication would have been the right thing to do. However, I chose to use a metaclass instead, because it didn't require me to cargo-cult(copy) a bunch of the framework code into my code and then modifying it. This is my solution:

class RequestHandlerMetaclass(type):
    def __init__(cls, name, bases, dct):
        super(RequestHandlerMetaclass, cls).__init__(name, bases, dct)
        org_post = getattr(cls, 'post')
        def post(self, *params, **kws):
            verb = self.request.get('_method')
            if verb:
                verb = verb.upper()
                if verb ==  'DELETE':
                    self.delete(*params, **kws)
                elif verb == 'PUT':
                    self.put(*params, **kws)
            else:
                org_post(self, *params, **kws)
        setattr(cls, 'post', post)

class MyRequestHandler(webapp.RequestHandler):
    __metaclass__ = RequestHandlerMetaclass
In the context of a Google App Engine Webapp framework application:
I want to changed the request verb of a request in the case a
parameter _method is provided, for example if a POST request comes in
with a parameter _method=PUT, I need to change the request to call the
put method of the handler. This is to cope with the way prototype.js
works with verbs like PUT and DELETE(workaround for IE). Here is my
first attempt:

class MyRequestHandler(webapp.RequestHandler):
   def initialize(self, request, response):
       m = request.get('_method')
       if m:
           request.method = m.upper()
       webapp.RequestHandler.initialize(self, request, response)

The problem is, for some reason whenever the redirect is done, the
self.request.params are emptied by the time the handling method(put or
delete) is called, even though they were populated when initialize was
called. Anyone have a clue why this is? As a workaround I thought I
could clone the params at initialize() time, but .copy() did not work,
and I haven't found a way to do that either.
Update: I received a very helpful response from Arachnid. The solution I ended up with uses a metaclass. It is found below.