I'd get rid of the left border on the sidebar entirely. Since you've got borders on your entries, it's really not necessary to delineate content, and just adds clutter.

You could probably just add a couple of pixels of padding-top to the green box to push it down to where the blog entries begin.

I'm not terribly fond of the gradient. Reminds me too much of photocopied books and microfilm pages. :)

Thanks, Liz. I took your advice and nixed the vertical border, and will see how I like it for a day or two. On the question of horizontal alignment, though, the problem with just using a few pixels to pad is that the degree of (mis)alignment varies with the text size. To do it right I think I need to calculate the distance in pixels from the bottom of the banner to the start of the blog entries, and then use CSS to enforce that same value for the start of the righthand column.

On the gradient: one reason I like it is that it picks up the grey in the banner image at top right--the same way the green in the new current events field now picks up the splash of green in the banner's "K". But then again it's late and I've clearly thought about this too much for one night. ;-)

I think that your first post is pushed lower by a margin-top attribute for the post itself (or a margin-bottom for the date). Since you don't have a similar push on the green, that's likely why it's not lining up.

I'm guessing (having not looked at the code... and more importantly, having not had any coffee yet this morning)? Try a margin-top: 5px on the greenbox perhaps (or add another 5px to the already existing margin-top)?

I agree about the vertical border - I like it gone.