You win with YouTube

In this Internet age, the Web can help tell you who really won Thursday’s debate between Republican presidential candidates.

Online intelligence firm New Media Strategies measured which Republican presidential candidate got the biggest bump from the Thursday debate. As of 3 p.m. Friday, views of YouTube videos of clips from the debate provide the following ranking:

First place: Mitt Romney, with 16,282 views (from different videos) of him discussing various issues (note: these videos were posted by the Romney campaign).

Second place: Ron Paul, with a total of 11,090 views (8,142 general highlights, 2,947 of him on going to war).

Third place: The candidates on evolution (3,386 from various YouTube postings).

And how about this for a distressing sign of the times: Such videos as those featuring the candidates weighing in on a potential first husband Bill Clinton (1,398 views from different videos) and Rudy Giuliani on abortion (1,549 views) proved more popular online than ones featuring the candidates on Iraq (230 views).

D’s and R’s as Montagues and Capulets

Tonight, a slew of lawmakers will take to the stage at the Shakespeare Theatre in its annual “Will on the Hill” fundraiser.

The pols will be parodying “Romeo and Juliet,” with D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton playing Lady Capulet and Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., taking a turn as Romeo.

We’ll have to wait for the actual performance to see what the costumes will be, but radio reporter Chad Pergram of Capitol News Connection asked some lawmakers about whether they and their colleagues will be in tights.

“You know, I’ve really not asked,” Bachus said. “Because I’d rather not know before I get there. … I want to be able to sleep the night before.”

Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, said that seeing Utah Republican Sen. Robert Bennett “in tights would be worth going just to see if they make them that long. Or to see if something shows that wasn’t intended.”

Rep. Geoff Davis, R-Ky., when asked whether he’d like to see his colleague Mike Pence, R-Ind., in tights, replied, “I know some of his political opponents would probably pay for a photo of that. But I understand that [Illinois Democrat] Rahm Emmanuel has also been seen in tights as a ballet dancer. So, maybe [it’s one of] those common jokes on both sides of the aisle.”

The Washington Examiner’s ‘Railbirds’ rule

If you were looking to make a lot of money betting on Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, you should have looked no further than The Washington Examiner’s “Railbirds.” Political mavens by day (Jim Barnes, Isobel Ellis and Jake Welch work for National Journal magazine), these three predicted what turned out to be the one-two-three order of finish for the 133rd running of the Derby.

In Friday’s Examiner, the Railbirds gave their pick for what proved to be the winning trifecta: Street Sense, Hard Spun and Curlin. None of the 20 analysts surveyed by the Daily Racing Form nailed that result, although their consensus — Street Sense, followed by Curlin, followed by a three-way tie for third which included Great Hunter, Hard Spun and Nobiz Like Shobiz — came close.

If you bet $50 on a straight triple using the Railbirds’ predicted finish — a wager that even they didn’t have the foresight (or nerve) to lay down — you would have won a cool $11,000. But any day you come home from the track with your wallet a little fuller is a good one.

But did the Railbirds’ wallets benefit from their own great foresight?

“I cashed, I made some money, I’m happy,” Barnes said.

And we hear that both Welch and Ellis walked away slightly richer, too.

Restaurant world turns to cocktails from the District

Sunday night’s James Beard Media Awards in New York City — the Oscars of the culinary world — took on a D.C. flavor, at least in the glass.

D.C.’s own Eric Felten, the spirits columnist for The Wall Street Journal when he’s not leading his own big band orchestra, and Todd Thrasher, bar manager for Restaurant Eve and PX in Old Town Alexandria, presented their cocktail creations as celebrity mixologists.

Felten also was nominated for a James Beard Media Award in the category of Newspaper Writing on Spirits, Wine or Beer, while Thrasher’s partner Cathal Armstrong was nominated for a Best Chefs in America Award for the mid-Atlantic region.

Washingtonians to contribute to festival

When the Paul Green School of Rock — an after-school rock music program and the inspiration for the Jack Black movie — hosts its first music festival in Asbury Park, N.J., next month, there will be two native Washingtonian artists on the bill.

Bad Brains, the seminal D.C. punk band, will be performing, as will Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, a well-known session guitar player who was a member of The Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan. Baxter is also buddies with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., and has been a consultant to the Pentagon on missile defense.

Tenet & Co. toast new book

Georgetown University was briefly a school for spies Friday night as scores of current and former CIA operatives came to celebrate the publication of George Tenet’s new book, “At the Center of the Storm.” Tenet ran the CIA under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and now teaches at Georgetown.

“I wrote this for a number of reasons,” he said in a short speech before signing copies of the 500-page memoir. “One is historical application.” (Of course, the cigar-chewing Tenet did not mention an advance from HarperCollins that an aide put at more than $1 million and less than $4 million.)

Tenet paid homage to his wife, Stephanie Glakas-Tenet, a writer of do-it-yourself books. Tenet confessed that in their long marriage he never changed one lightbulb.

In the audience were John McLaughlin, Tenet’s deputy director; John Brennan, his No. 3 at CIA headquarters; Charles Allen, the top intelligence man at the Department of Homeland Security; FBI Director Robert Mueller; and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft (Scowcroft was flying out that night for a vacation in Kunnebunkport, Maine, joining former President George H.W. Bush).

Missing: The current CIA director, Michael Hayden, who was at an out-of-town speech. Also, fellow Georgetown instructor Douglas Feith, Donald Rumsfeld’s chief policy-maker who clashed with the CIA on a number of Iraq issues and recently wrote a harsh review of Tenet’s book in The Wall Street Journal.

Rowan Scarborough contributed to this page.