Blockquote & URL generating plugins

My only quarrel with the default WP blockquote feature is that if you display an image on the left side of the post you will not see the blockquote line (which also displays on the left). That in turn destroys the reader’s ability to see that the passage is a quotation. You can see an example of this with the first image in this post:
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2005/12/yossi-beilin-has-seen-the-future-and-he-is-marwan-barghouti/

I’d like to find a blockquote feature that will be visible regardless of whether an image is displayed on the left side. If there’s a way to use css to get the current blockquote tags to display even with a left oriented image, that’d work fine for me. Say, when the image is on the left, the blockquote line would move to the right. Or a new plugin would be fine as well.

Also, I was wondering if there’s a quicker & easier URL generating plugin that the default Link tag. For example, I believe that Wikipedia uses a [] system which doesn’t require using tags at all. That system seems quicker & easier to use than all the mouse clicks involved currently in creating a URL.

Pls. let me know if you have solutions to either issue which you like.