I have a three button mouse, and I've set the middle button to open links in a new tab. There's a preference (I think under tabbed browsing.) Other apps like mail.app will honor this and open links clicked (not necessarily middle) will open in a new tab of the last Safari window.
I know in Firefox you can right click on the link and then select "Open in New Tab", which is better than opening a new tab manually and then pasting the link there. Don't know if that option is available in Safari though....
Oh, and like walker, on my PC I use the middle-click to open and close tabs. GREAT feature.
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