House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) is leading a group taking off Friday for a week in Taiwan and South Korea, looking at three days in Seoul and three in Taipei.

But don’t let that stop you from a lovely trip to the Alamo! Yes, GSA’s annual training and expo conference is starting Tuesday in historic San Antonio.

It was just after 10 a.m. Wednesday when a Loop Fan, driving in from Virginia across the Memorial Bridge, noticed a red VW bug, blinkers flashing, stopped just about halfway across the bridge.

Below an image of the flag of Zimbabwe, the script on the thick-stock paper reads: “President Robert Mugabe and the Ministry of Education, Sport, Art, and Culture invite you to the Premiere of The Dictator.”

But not on his own behalf — the California Democrat’s been campaigning in parts of his old district for his son, Chad Condit , who is running as an independent in the recently redrawn 10th District.

The lobbyist-turned-felon-turned-author recently petitioned the court for permission to make a jaunt to Paris to sell some books — though we can only assume he might find time to stroll Luxembourg Gardens or have a coffee at Les Deux Magots. Seems Abramoff’s book, “Capitol Punishment” has fans in the City of Light. He’s been asked to give speeches in Europe and also hopes to “possibly arrange the sale of the European distribution rights to his book,” according to the court filing that our research diva Alice Crites uncovered.

Rep. Aaron Schock seems to understand this better than most members of Congress. After all, his chiseled physique and fashion sense has landed him, shirtless, on the cover of Men’s Health and in a photo spread in GQ in which he sported designer suits.

Take the bloody international incident that played out in the otherwise civilized environs of the genteel Foxhall neighborhood, where the ambassadors of Belgium and Spain occupy lovely adjacent residences.

As we noted in February 2011, Clinton, after two years in office, just eked ahead of Rice with a late flurry of January jaunts — including a six-day 16,500-miler to the Middle East and a spectacular, last-minute one-day trip, on Jan. 30, 2011, to Haiti.

Seems the airline’s new policies are costing a paw and a leg for them to move their pets from country to country. The carrier’s new rules have upped the charge for pet transfers, and though it gives a nice waiver to members of the military who have to make such moves, it doesn’t offer the same deal to the diplomats.

And even if your family doesn’t think you’re so cool, everyone else is bowing and scraping and calling you “Your Excellency.”

Bad timing then for the Election Assistance Commission to be completely leaderless. It’s the body that was created in the wake of the 2000 presidential election’s hanging-chad debacle and tasked with overseeing federal election standards.

Secretary of State Hillary “The Texter” Clinton will be taking her plane — then heading from there to meetings in Brasilia and Brussels.

And yet. And yet. The pols have some poetry in them, as explained in an excellent new book, “The Anthology of Really Important Modern Poetry” — out now, just as we celebrate April as National Poetry Month.

Thanks to the clowning and magic tricks by the General Services Administration at a posh Las Vegas resort (the one that led to the resignation this week of the agency’s chief and two of her top deputies and the ouster — “administrative leave” — of four officials involved in planning the ritzy event) the word may now be verboten among the agencies.

Aside from royally ticking off Republicans, the move to bypass Congress and install a handful of nominees seems to have installed a Trojan horse on the board. Terence Flynn, a Republican who was one of the White House’s recess appointments, is accused of sharing inside information about the board with private-sector friends, including Mitt Romney’s top labor adviser.

In a fundraising e-mail sent last weekend, the Minnesota Democrat attempted to dazzle would-be donors to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee with some number-juggling prowess. He boasted that he often entertains kids on visits to schools in his state by proving the Pythagorean theorem on their chalkboards (we can practically hear the oohs and ahhs from the impressed grade-schoolers) and cheekily referred to himself as a “math genius.”

On Tuesday, we brought you the squirm-inducing revelation from its pages that Specter thought vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin “radiated sensuality.”

Take the recent move by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to designate NATO ally Turkey as a “country of particular concern” (CPC) — putting Turkey on a par with serious malefactors Burma, China, North Korea, Sudan, Uzbekistan and the other usual suspects.

Super PAC monikers run the gamut, from downright bizarre to stirringly sentimental.

We don’t expect the teetotaling former Massachusetts governor, who has said he supports the federal ban on marijuana, to take the leafy bait — but there are a few reasons it might not be such a wacky idea, once the GOP field has shaken out and he’s the last man standing.

With Senate leaders’ agreement this week to move on 14 judicial nominations, it’s theoretically possible that the Obama White House, which is currently far behind the past two administrations in the number of judges confirmed, could catch up to its predecessors.

The blog Daily Kos, which launched Operation Hilarity to encourage Democrats to vote in Michigan’s Republican primary, said Wednesday that it was shifting its focus to North Dakota, Tennessee and Vermont for Super Tuesday.

Take, for example, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper’s appearance last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D- Mich.) told Clapper he was “concerned by recent news reports that the latest National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, reflects a difference of views between the intelligence community and our military commanders over the security situation in Afghanistan.”

A colleague called the Republican National Committee the other day and was told by a spokesman that it was closed.

“The absolutely perfect diplomatic appointment, the one we’ve dreamed of for years, is about to be diminished forever,” we wrote then.

It was as though the ex-lobbyist had never left. By “left,” we mean “was incarcerated in the federal pen,” and by “ex-lobbyist,” we include “convicted felon.”