No, I haven’t dropped off the face of the Earth. I’m just on vacation, down at the beach. And unfortunately, the place where I usually blog down here has closed down, so I don’t have convenient Web service.

And since I neither get newspapers nor am able to READ the Web here, I’m not inspired to WRITE anything, because I don’t know what’s going on.

Its kind of weird and disorienting, but I’m going with it for the moment.

I’ll be checking back in soon; I just don’t know when…

I urge you to go ahead and watch me on ETV with Mark Quinn tonight at 7:30.

But I doubt you’ll be as interested in what I say as in this OTHER interview that Mark did at ETV studios today, with Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Alvin Greene.

The guy’s just all over the place now, isn’t he?

Aden Mabruk -- Photo by Tracy Glantz, The State

From the really, really Good News file.

OK, State paper, all is forgiven. I particularly enjoyed seeing the front-page story this morning about Aden Mabruk graduating from Richland Northeast High School today.

Remember the Somali Bantu? They started out as a faceless abstraction, rejected by Cayce, then literally embraced by Mayor Bob in one of the most heartwarming local news photos I can recall seeing in our community in the past decade. Then, for the most part, they were forgotten.

But not by my family — more specifically, not by my dear wife, who was for a time the team leader for our church’s sponsorship of a Bantu family (a position ably filled by our friend Emily Hero the last couple of years). The days, weeks, months she spent helping them get situated, getting the widowed mother of the family a job, acting as go-between with her employer, making runs to the one butcher she could find who would supply a goat for a taste of home, getting the younger kids to their doctor’s appointments and coordinating with their school to make sure they got their medication, taking the mother shopping…

And tutoring. Especially, tutoring the young boy who was now the man of the family since his dad was gone and his older brother had a family of his own, the boy who learned English ahead of everyone, the boy who was spokesman for his mother, who avidly consumed the copies of my Wall Street Journal that my wife took to him, the boy with the insatiable thirst to learn,  to soak up the world, to prepare for making the most of the opportunity that America provided…

That boy was Aden Mabruk. So my wife took off the morning from keeping our grandbabies today, and went to his graduation. I’m writing this just to say that I’m proud of her. And proud of Aden.

Side A of Frazier ad.

Side B of Frazier ad.

Here’s something you don’t see every day any more: Republican candidates vying to be seen as friends to public schools, and attacking other GOP candidates for supporting vouchers and such.

It’s certainly not unheard-of. GOP Reps. Bill Cotty and Ken Clark were great advocates for and defenders of public education. But you’ll notice that neither of them is in the House any more. Ken lost to a candidate funded by voucher advocates (although there were also some local issues that played into it), and Bill Cotty apparently just got tired of being targeted by those people every two years and having to answer their lies about him. There are Republicans who support public schools in the Legislature yet, but few who are willing to stand up as boldly, against such well-funded opposition, as Cotty and Clark.

And you’ll note that the GOP candidate you hear the most from in Cotty’s old district is his old pro-choice opponent Sheri Few — the one who goes on and on about how Anton Gunn is such a socialist.

Nowadays, your most prominent Republicans climb all over each other in competition to see who can come across as the biggest partisan ideologue, the biggest enemy of government and all its works, the biggest, most extreme hater of Barack Obama. Doubt me? Check out the Republicans seeking to become our governor.

But to my great delight, in my very own House district, we have a debate that is at least semi-reminiscent of Cotty and Clark. We’ve not gone in much for ideological extremism in District 69. Our current representative is the sensible, relative moderate Ted Pitts. And the smart candidates aim for that sort of tone.

In the last few days, though, things have gotten a bit heated. First, Danny Frazier attacked Rick Quinn, accusing him of being a closet voucher supporter — in other words, of being what Sheri Few or Nikki Haley would shout from the mountaintops. It painted him as a foul hypocrite and enemy of our schools for having done such things as calling a Mark Sanford-favored bill “a good step,” and for having taken money from out-of-state voucher promoters.

Mere days after I got that mailer, Rick fired back, making it clear that “I would NEVER support any scheme that would damage funding for our public schools.” He went on to say he would fight for better school funding, and to point out that not only is he a product of Lexington County public schools himself, but is sending his kids through the same system.

Some of you will recall that I toyed with the idea of running for Ted Pitts’ seat myself, on the UnParty ticket. And if the rules allow (I haven’t thoroughly researched it), I might still consider such a run if I don’t like the choices we have coming out of this primary. (There are three other Republicans running — Ernie Peagler, T.R. Parrish and Gary Taylor — and a lone Democrat, Jan Steensen Crangle.)

But for now, I’m enjoying the kind of debate I’m seeing between two of the candidates to represent me in the House.

Disclaimer: One of these guys is an advertiser on this blog. But you knew that. I mean, the ad is right over there…

Quinn mailer, side A.

Quinn mailer, side B.

Just FYI, The State’s Adam Beam is reporting over on his Metro Desk blog the following developments since this morning’s story:

1. Tandy Carter has requested an Attorney General’ opinion

2. Councilman Sam Davis was in a car accident in 2008, and the Highway Patrol investigated.

3. The Highway Patrol won’t take the Benjamin investigation

Just all sorts of complications…

Speaking of pivotal moments — over the next few hours, my blog will be completing its migration to a new host or platform or whatever you call it. So no more posts today. I intend to be back bright and early tomorrow.

In the meantime, if I’ve got anything urgent to share with you, I’ll put it on Twitter and Facebook.

When I get back here, hopefully we won’t see any more of those spam messages that have been plaguing some of you in recent weeks. In fact, I’m hoping we can improve functionality of the blog considerably.

See you tomorrow.

Wes Wolfe. At left is one of the beers he had the foresight to grab before the bar closed.

Having Wesley Donehue pipe up about Nikki Haley on roll call voting reminded me of something. Wesley’s the guy who arranged for the Blogger’s Row table at the Silver Elephant banquet a couple of weeks back.

And there was something that happened that night that I failed to mention.

The bloggers’ table had all modern conveniences (even though I had trouble connecting with my laptop and had to borrow Wesley’s for my live-blogging, while he used his iPad). Food was served, which I suppose we could debate the ethics of, except that I didn’t eat any of it. I DID cadge a beer before they closed the open bar. Wes Wolfe, sitting next to me, had the foresight to get three beers at once before it closed.

But the main thing was, it was a TABLE at which we could work comfortably. It was a bit awkward for photography being at the back of the room (we bloggers tend to use cameras that fit in our pockets rather than the cannon-like lenses that the MSM use), but mostly it was fine. And did I mention that Earl Capps was seated on the other side of me, the first time I’ve ever met him? (He didn’t look the way I expected. For some reason I thought of him as some middle-aged guy. Instead, he looked kind of like that guy who fronted “The Commitments” in the movie. Although I’m sure he’s nothing like that tosser.)

That’s not what I started this to tell you about. What I wanted to tell you was this: Our table was on a little platform at the back of the banquet hall. On another platform a few yards away sat the stalwarts of the MSM, including Jim Davenport of The Associated Press and Leroy Chapman of The State. They had laptops, too, but theirs were awkwardly balanced on their knees. They had no table, or any other mod cons. It was sad. They were sitting over there like poor relations. As an old newspaperman myself, I felt a sense of injustice. Not enough of one to offer them my seat, of course, but then I thought they might be too proud to take it. They might not want to rub shoulders with the kinds of sleazebags who swill free beer and openly ask political figures for money.

But it strikes me that this may have been an important moment — the moment when a mainstream party, at one of its biggest events, makes greater accommodation for bloggers than for the MSM. Yes, the fact that the blog-mad Wesley Donehue had arranged it probably distorted things, but still. When some future Gibbon writes The History of the Decline and Fall of the MSM, will this incident figure prominently?

Earl Capps, of Blogland fame, at work on Blogger's Row. Past him, beyond the video camera on the tripod, is the naked platform on which the MSM worked in spartan discomfort.

By the way, I’d like to send out an attaboy to the Rev. Dick Lincoln of Shandon Baptist Church for helping bring to the community’s attention the attempt to bring high-stakes bingo to Decker Boulevard — even though the county councilman associated with the move, Jim Manning, is a member of his congregation.

I don’t know from where I sit how influential Dick’s mention of this from the pulpit was in defeating the proposal so soundly that Mr. Manning himself turned against it yesterday, but I do know that the first place I heard about the plan was from another member of that congregation, who heard Dick’s sermon Sunday.

I don’t even know what he said. But the key thing was bringing it to people’s attention.

Lots of folks get nervous when preachers mix in politics. Not me. This is a good example of how faith leaders can positively engage issues to the betterment of their communities.

Today’s award (and if I make this a regular feature, I’m going to have to come up with a zippier name for it) goes to Henry McMaster, who is determined not to let those other Republicans out-extreme him. His latest Tweet:

Join our fight to defeat enemies of individual liberty & state sovereignty in Obama administration & Congress! http://is.gd/aWy7c #sctweets

It almost sounds like the kind of unself-consciously stilted rhetoric you hear from Marxist revolutionaries, like “Join us in Vanguard of resistance to plots of the running dog imperialists!” or some such.

“ENEMIES” no less. “Enemies of individual liberty.” Wow.

None of this sounds like the Henry McMaster who has been such a commonsense attorney general (especially compared to his predecessor) these last few years, the guy who stood steadfastly with McCain against party extremists in 2008.

Yet another step along the disturbing path I described back here…