The last time that we checked in on the long, slow slide of the nationally known Dallas Morning News religion section, which became the more conventional religion beat, I wrote the following with a cyber-sigh:

Still waiting to hear about the status of the religion weblog.

Stay tuned.

Well, alas, that shoe has now dropped.

Cue the violins, because here's the word from what is left of the Dallas Morning News religion-news weblog:

Bruce Tomaso, Jeff Weiss and I collaborated in the founding and sustaining of this blog, but we've all moved on from religion coverage. I'm the last to go, having recently been reassigned to cover the school systems of Allen and McKinney, Texas -- north of Dallas. I may still be doing religion stories occasionally, and I will have access to the religion blog for the occasional post. But my focus will have to be reporting on and blogging about those two school systems. The plan is for the editorial department to pick up the religion blog, but that could take a while. So, faithful readers -- and I affectionately include our skeptics in that designation -- bear with us.

Well, for starters, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a surprisingly large amount of religion news in the public school systems in suburban Dallas, since, well, Dallas is Dallas and Dallas is in Texas. But that's another issue.

I'll say it again: When newspaper management cannot fund a religion-news beat in Dallas, freakin' Texas, then you can take the word MAINSTREAM out of the phrase "mainstream media." Can I hear an "amen"?

However, Weiss dropped me a note that there will be another part-time act in his religion-news story, while he keeps his new day job. He will be writing for a new AOL-driven faith and politics weblog at Politicsdaily.com. Click here to visit and bookmark

So what's my niche? I hope the overall content of the blog will mostly be a sort of applied theology/ethics looking at public policy and public figures. As I put in the tagline, connecting the dots -- between what people say they believe and what they actually do. But I'm sure I'll also throw in some of the pop culture stuff as I did on the DMN's Religion blog once in a while. Will it work? Who knows. ... It's nice to be back in the game.

So stay tuned. Again.