You know what would be a nice idea for a WordPress plugin…

As a blogger, I want to reduce the number of clicks it takes to quote and cite an article so that I can blog more efficiently.

Here’s how it might work:

1. I am reading a New York Times article that I want to quote.
2. I highlight a section of the text.
3. I alt-tab over to my Write Post window
4. I hit alt-shift-Q (or whatever) and WordPress shows a little dialog allowing me to choose from among my open browser tabs (extra credit for guessing that I want the one with a block of text selected)
5. I type a little preamble, say “Paul Krugman is on form today”
6. And WordPress creates a post like this:

Paul Krugman is on form today.

Forty years ago, Richard Nixon made a remarkable marketing discovery. By exploiting America’s divisions — divisions over Vietnam, divisions over cultural change and, above all, racial divisions — he was able to reinvent the Republican brand. The party of plutocrats was repackaged as the party of the “silent majority,” the regular guys — white guys, it went without saying — who didn’t like the social changes taking place.