PEP 328 looks like it will solve my recent import issues.
However, the PEP mentions that
In Python 2.4, you must enable the new absolute import behavior with from __future__ import absolute_import
which got me excited because it means I don't need to wait for Python 2.5 to take advantage of it.
However
from __future__ import absolute_import
gives
SyntaxError: future feature absolute_import is not defined
So that part of PEP 328 was just teasing me. I think it's an error in the PEP.