I've used only a couple of types of tires, so I'm no expert, but I recently had to buy some tires so I looked through a bunch of threads here, and for commuting, I found that people like these tires, more or less in this order:

Schwalbe Marathon
Panaracer Pacela TourGard
Continental Top Touring 2000
Bontrager Race Lite
Continental Gatorskin
Vittoria Randonneur
Specialized Armadillos

Some comments I saw:
Armadillos don't ride that well

Every one of these tires had people who swore they were great tires.
I think you're on target for picking the Pacelas for a fast ride in a relatively tough commuter tire.

I'm running 32s but that's because my rims really won't take much smaller, or I'd probably be running 28s. I don't think I'd want to run any smaller than that; even with 32s I can certainly feel the road, at least better than with the 38s my bike came with.