Radical Thinking Logo

Another day, another logo. My new project is for a political blog that will be launched later this month called RadicalThinking.org. It examines current events and while is admittedly left-wing, has the goal of objectively examining pros and cons of proposals and actions of both parties. In some ways Radical Thinking is a play on words since his writings are not really radical but rather common sense in that he's willing to make compromises for the greater good. Here are a couple of working examples.

I used this font, Caslon Antique, because it feel like it has a history to, a texture, as if it's personal but also its heavy weight makes the logo feel powerful and strong. The scales symbolize justice, such as the lady justice motif.
Above "Radical" is in a script font called Zapfino. I had hoped this would make an inter sting juxtaposition between radical's definition and its shape. I also found out that radical does not only mean extreme, but it can also mean arising from or going to the root or the source. Since this blog's aim is to be similar to the revolutionary war movements such as the Federalist Papers, which were forward thinking and "radical" thought this might be a nice similarity.

This third version best highlights the scales and bolds "radical" the best. This is my favorite logo so far because of its strong solid shape and rectangle. My only worry is that it may be hard to read at first? Do you read T-Radical? Or do you read the T as an illustration and then as a letter in thinking? Leave a comment, let me know.
This final version is the most iconic. I think it was a good exploration, but it may be too abstract. I am tempted now to remove the words and just add an "R" to make it more of a initialed logo...this probably wouldn't work for a blog logo since it's highly important to share the domain, not just the logo-type. If my client had a huge advertising budget, he could do it, but this is just a small scale operation.