Is anybody out there?

Editor's note: Our friends at TypePad, who host this blog, have had trouble with their servers today and have been serving content from their last backup, from several days ago. We're told the problem is fixed now and future posts will appear as they are published.

This is kind of like broadcasting during a power outage: it's hard to tell if anyone will read this, since our blog has been down all day. First and foremost: our sincere apologies. We have come to treat the Internet like a public utility... our lives are predicated on computers... until it all crashes down around us.

Tonight's broadcast has a lot to do with domestic surveillance, sure to be the next hot domestic topic. Mr. Lehrer sat down with the President today and shed some new light on this during the interview. We have a number of great stories in the broadcast tonight... among them Mike Taibbi on an extraordinary New Yorker, and Richard Engel on some palpable changes in Iraq, where hopes are high that we truly could be seeing a new era. It would be nice to know that our fighting men and women would face less danger this holiday season.