Grip it and rip it: a concept for touch-scrolling and touch-dragging

It seems that the current model for drag and edit operations on objects in a touch-scrolling environment a la iPhone or Android is to tap-and-hold to initiate an edit mode, wherein the screen dims or the icons begin to jiggle or something else signifies this new modality where the domain is now locked down and the entities within that domain are free to move.  It works well enough, I suppose.  There's another model that involves a "drag handle" on each item that allows it to be moved when you drag up or down from that point of contact.  Also works well enough, but I'm left unsatisfied.

Read on for an explanation of a new concept I came up with.