Most of these answers will only work for a single level of flattening. For a more comprehensive solution, try this (from http://rightfootin.blogspot.com/2006/09/more-on-python-flatten.html):
def flatten(l, ltypes=(list, tuple)):
ltype = type(l)
l = list(l)
i = 0
while i < len(l):
while isinstance(l[i], ltypes):
if not l[i]:
l.pop(i)
i -= 1
break
else:
l[i:i + 1] = l[i]
i += 1
return ltype(l)