Need Blogging Software Advice

I’ve just learned that Radio Userland and Salon Blogs, which have hosted Drug WarRant since it started in 2003, are shutting down for good in December.
That means I will lose all prior comments (which were hosted on their server), and I will lose all the ‘blogs.salon.com’ addressing scheme (which really affects popular pages like “why is marijuana illegal” — all the current links to it out on the web will be dead links.
Now I can go ahead and mirror the entire blog to a different server and continue to use the software, but as long as I’m losing all those links, that removes my one main reason for continuing to use a fairly clunky blogging software.
So I’m looking for suggestions. My technical expertise is moderate – very strong in html/css coding, less so in server/database areas. What would be a good platform to move to? What should I use for comments? (Yes, I know a lot of you will be thrilled that the current commenting system will be gone.)
One possibility is to use the Radio software to mirror the archives and keep them that way, and start fresh with the new software.
I think I’d like to keep the same basic structure of the blog — it seems to work pretty well for me.
What are your thoughts?