Andrew Sullivan, who blogs The Daily Dish, says he’s taking a mental health break to get away from the trench warfare being waged by the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

I don’t blame him. It must be terribly stressful to be required, in his phrase, to “have an opinion every 23 minutes.”

While he’s away, his blog will be covered by his research assistant, Patrick Appel. Mr. Appel claims to “keep tabs” on 500 blogs. Is such a thing possible? How many blogs can one so much as glance at in a day? But whether Mr. Appel was exaggerating or not, I’ll give him credit for finding and posting some very titillating facts and commentaries.

Meanwhile, the March 17 issue of The Ragan Report contains a link to what Britain’s Manchester Guardian calls the 50 most powerful blogs on the Internet. Here it is: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/09/blogs.

The Daily Dish ranked number 40 on the list. The Drudge Report ranked number 11. First place went to The Huffington Post. Unfortunately, I didn’t make the cut, but I get enough favorable feedback from readers like you to keep me posting.