i have an installation that is plagued with this, tried deleting everything, changing chmods, still no dice.
for future reference, this was my problem:
i set used the_excerpt in the left column, and even though i listed the_content in the right, it only displayed the excerpt on the right side, too.
this is what i used to limit the number of characters for the post on the left: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/content-and-excerpt-word-limit/
