I’m up at the Woodrow Wilson School today at Princeton University through tomorrow. Will post tomorrow morning, but until then — by popular demand — another Oakley picture and an open thread.

Wednesday this week, the Valerie Plame grand jury will assemble again, and that might be the day that Jason Leopold’s report on Rove’s indictment last Friday either makes global news or fizzles out.

Behind the scenes, White House aides—as well as other prominent Republicans in Washington—are nervous that their most valuable political player could be taken out of the game on the eve of a crucial midterm election this fall. “To see him back before that grand jury has people very worried,” said a House GOP lawmaker and close ally of the White House, who decline

(Pondering a post-Castro Cuba) I’ve just spent one day in Mexico City, my first time. Mostly, I was with a group of academics and public intellectuals mostly from ITAM in Mexico City, the University of Texas in Austin, and the University of Havana in Cuba.

Sometimes I just want to write quick-blip reactions to stuff I see out there. Here are some things that caught my attention on the way back from Mexico City today: 1.

Recently, I wrote that “if all things remained equal“, if Karl Rove was indicted in Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of the Valerie Plame Wilson outing case, Bush’s numbers would fall to 28%.

I’m participating in a conference in Mexico City titled “Prospects for US-Mexico-Cuba E-Engagement” sponsored by the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT Austin, the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, and ITAM.

(President George Bush and his pal, former CIA Director Porter Goss) One of the enduring passions of President George H.W. Bush has been the study of national security intelligence and the institutions that support a central intelligence structure inside a liberal democracy. That is right up there as one of President Bush’s dad’s biggest hobbies….

I will be getting into Mexico City late tonight and am returning to Washington on Saturday. I do have TWN readers in Mexico — quite a number of them — but don’t know where they are located. So email me if interested in a blog politics coffee session either Friday afternoon or Saturday morning.

Richard Armitage co-chaired with former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown my very first Council on Foreign Relations study group when I moved to Washington in the mid-1990s. He’s an interesting man — tied deeply into Japan affairs. But truth in advertising — Armitage and I have very different views of Japan’s path to normal nationhood….