I will be back to Washington on Friday after an excellent program in Madrid with the Spain- based alums of the London School of Economics. I am now in Barcelona.

Bashar al-Assad’s regime finds itself dealing with an interesting mix of press in the lame duck days. Today’s papers report re-established intelligence ties between British and Syrian agencies; they come as British FM David Miliband makes a landmark visit to Damascus, in which he met with President Assad.

Today, Google CEO Eric Schmidt who is also Chairman of the Board of Directors at the New America Foundation (where I work) will give a speech and answer questions at an event organized by my organization and which I will stream live here at The Washington Note from 1:00 pm til 2:30 pm EST.

Rumor is that Obama’s new presidential car, the Obamamobile, will look something like this. Looks like a fun, tough tank of a limo. Whatever it takes to protect him is fine with me — but bet this gas hog will put a dent in Greenland ice.

(Andrew Bacevich talking with Bill Moyers) Fire Dog Lake has some of the best book salons on the web. They run in real time for two hours with a web-based exchange between an author and FDL readers.

Congratulations to Cem Oezdemir who has been elected co-chairman of the German Green Party. It’s the party’s top political post. His victory makes him the highest-ranking German politician of Turkish descent. Turkish immigrants and their descendants number more than 2.5 million and make up 3% of Germany’s total population.

Los Angeles Times correspondent P.J. Huffstutter has pool reporter duty today and sent in this gem. . . However, your pool reporter did spot something sort of charming in today’s Chicago Sun-Times: According to gossip Michael Sneed, Obama’s new Secret Service name is “Renegade.” Mrs. Obama’s is reportedly “Renaissance.

Four days ago I published and then quickly “unpublished” this item on Hillary Clinton being in line for Secretary of State: I just received some surprising news — like, really surprising. The deal is not done — but at the moment — Hillary Rodham Clinton is in the lead to be Secretary of State.

My friend and former New America Foundation colleague Karen Kornbluh, who was principal author of the Democratic Party Platform and who has served as Policy Director in Senator Barack Obama’s Senate office, just had a great profile/Q&A appear on CNN.