The New Donkey weighs in on what Democratic politicians should do about Hollywood celebrity endorsements. His answer: “Democrats have an easy solution to this particular problem: just stop inviting movie and television stars to share their platforms, particularly if they are unwilling to accept a script that keeps them from saying stupid or offensive things.”

Sounds pretty smart to me.

I picked up a copy of Naomi Schaefer Riley’s new book, God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America. I’ve only paged through it a bit so far, but it’s very, very interesting, and full of good reporting. Worth a look.

Had a chance to meet blogger Michael McClellan yesterday. His blog, Port McClellan, is worth checking out.

Evan Coyne Maloney came to D.C. for the inauguration protests and the video is priceless.

Maloney is getting scary good at these productions. His manner on camera is so perfectly pitched that it doesn’t even scare you when one protestor tells him, “We’ll have to come out and kill somebody, I guess.”

Last night I attended a family-style poetry reading at the American Enterprise Institute. Joseph Bottum, parting books editor at the Standard, organized and hosted the event, which featured several works from a lovely manuscript of children’s verse he is writing. The panel included poet, critic, NEA biggie Dana Gioia, Standard editor Bill Kristol, Mary Eberstadt (professional troublemaker and author of an excellent new book on day care and other ways parents escape their obligations), Tim Kelleher*, actor and poet, and Christopher Hitchens. I left after a very entertaining half hour (work called), missing the best part.

According to two eye-witnesses, during the second or third go-around in which panelists read favorite examples of children’s verse, Ole Hitch pulled out a flask, right there on the AEI dais in front of a roomful of children and a pair of television cameras (C-Span was recording), and took a pull before placing his flask on the table, in full view of the audience, for continued access.

Cool, profane, get-to-a-meeting-please: It’s hard to know how to view such behavior.

*correction: not Thomas Kelleher as I originally wrote. Tim played Ted Sorenson in Thirteen Days and has many other showbiz credits.

From this morning’s presidential press briefing:

Q: Mr. President, do you think it’s a proper use of government funds to pay commentators to promote your policies?

THE PRESIDENT: No.

Q: Are you going to order that–

THE PRESIDENT: Therefore, I will not pay you to–[laughter.]

Q: Fair enough. Are you ordering that there be an end to that practice?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I am. I expect my Cabinet Secretaries to make sure that that practice doesn’t go forward. There needs to be independence. And Mr. Armstrong Williams admitted he made a mistake. And we didn’t know about this in the White House, and there needs to be a nice, independent relationship between the White House and the press, the administration and the press. So, no, we shouldn’t be going for it.

Did you catch that? Armstrong is the one who made the mistake. All by himself. Those people who work for the president who stuffed $240,000 of your money down Armstrong’s pants? Well they didn’t make him take it, now did they?

To be fair, a couple questions later, the president acknowledged that “the Department of Education,” too, made a mistake. You know the old saying: The buck stops . . . over there. Somewhere.

Buried, so to speak, by news of the tsunami and the inauguration was a fascinating story in the Washington Post about the recent discovery of the ruins of Nero’s palace in Rome. According to correspondent Daniel Williams, frescoes of “naked men harvesting grapes and making wine” were found on a giant arch marking an entrance to Nero’s infamous Domus Aurea, the “Golden House.” The Romans themselves actually hid the palace from view after Nero’s suicide so as to wipe away any trace of the tyrant’s rule. (It is located forty feet below the Trajan Baths while Nero’s artificial lake was paved over by the Colosseum.) Archaelogists are unsure what the newly uncovered halls and grottoes will lead to but one Abner Ravenwood was certain he would at last find the Well of Souls.

Editor & Publisher is reporting that document expert Marcel Matley is now going after CBS and Thornburgh-Boccardi, demanding corrections in the report and setting up a possible defamation suit.