question about binary and serial info

[nephish at xit.net]

i have an interesting project at work going on. here is the challenge.
i am using the serial module to read data from a serial input.
it comes in as a hex. i need to make it a binary and compare it bit by
bit to another byte. They have some weird way they set this up that i
have to compare these things with AND. in other words, if bit 1 is 1
AND bit 1 is 1 then the real value is 1...

long story short. is there a good way to compare bytes, bit by bit with
one of the modules of python. i want to know so i dont get halfway into
developing this and find that there is a much better way to do this
than by hand.

thanks for any suggestions.
sk <><