More housekeeping ... Between Iraq, Katrina, China, the Chief Justice, North Korea, the economy, and oh by the way Iran, there's about a thousand and one pressing things to write about today. However, before I can get to those issues I need to do some housekeeping first.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, we're in the process of moving this site over to its own domain, or more simply, to www.democraticvista.org. But to make the switch extra special, I also decided to switch to a different blogging software.

Fortunately, anyone who visits the site itself won't notice a change. The homepage will look the same, the comments will work the same way, etc. The difference is that I'll be able to do some technical things that will make the site significantly easier to find for media members and media observers alike.

I mention this now because several weeks ago I started putting the new software through a demo run. Fortunately, it's as good as promised. Unfortunately, I realized today -- when one reader officially subscribed to the demo site -- that the demo site's server completely warps search engine results. Of course, in the long run that warp promises to be a boon. But for now it means that a Google search of, say, "democratic vista" will land you at a site that isn't fully ready yet.

If you've also noticed the anomaly, my apologies for the confusion. Although there's little I can do about it now -- search engine entries are notoriously difficult to erase -- we should be up and running at our own domain soon. Until then, I'll keep posting here.

Finally, as a reward for those of you who're still reading this post, here's my quote of the day, by the inimitable Ben Stein: "We do not need to have 6,000-pound cars driving 100-pound humans to buy one-liter bottles of imported water."