Absurdity

I have found two problems that I am unable to fix at the moment.

1. If a title is longer than the sidebar, in Firefox a part of it will get cut off, so you can not see the entire title, as it is blocked by the vertical scroll. Now I can fix this in Firefox, but it creates problems in IE, mostly there is a black bar right before the vertical scroll. I think this might have something to do with the way Firefox handles the scroll, I am hoping FF3 fixes everything, or I find the solution before hand. I have applied a temporary solution that although it works, I hate to apply temp solutions to a problem.
2. For some reason (can be seen best by viewing nightshade) when the scroll bar is longer than the content, a black bar appears where there should not be one. I know I had this problem fixed before, however due to my poor documentation (something I plan to get better on) I forgot how I fixed it, so I will get to play around with the CSS and HTML for a while hoping to find a good fix. Update: I have fixed it in FF, but for some reason IE still displays it with the black bar when the sidebar is longer...this is annoying.