Very early this morning, Bloomberg News cited a report in the German press saying that Obama will not speak at Brandenburg gate in Berlin next week:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will give a speech at the Victory Column in central Berlin, avoiding the Brandenburg Gate after a political spat broke out over plans to speak there, Berliner Zeitung said.

A stage will be set up at the column, a 19th-century fluted structure that lies at the opposite end of a tree-lined boulevard from the Brandenburg Gate, the newspaper said. The campaign will announce the plans for July 24 today, it said.

An appearance at the Victory Column, capped by its trademark gilded angel, will still give the Illinois senator the Brandenburg Gate as a backdrop in the distance.

Politico also linked this morning to a German language version. And here's an English language version from the German press.

If true, it seems like a pretty solid compromise. But the report is un-sourced. The Obama campaign is refusing to confirm it, though it isn't denying it, either. And Berlin City Hall declined to comment to us, too.

We'll let you know if we confirm.

Obama To Meet With Merkel Next Week
Barack Obama will be meeting this coming Thursday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has opposed his campaign's floated idea of speaking at the Brandenburg Gate. However, it appears Obama will still have the chance to personally meet with the conservative head of government when he tours Europe.

McCain In Michigan Today
John McCain is holding a town hall today in Michigan, a state that his campaign is aggressively targeting to turn from blue to red. Given the state's troubled automotive industry, expect McCain to push his gas tax holiday proposals. The Obama campaign has not announced any events for today.

Netroots Nation: Fox News Is Opinion Journalism
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Freedom's Watch Making Robocalls On Oil Drilling
Right-wing independent group Freedom's Watch has stepped up its robocall campaign against targeted House Democrats. The New Hampshire Union Leader reports that the group is now hitting both of the state's Dem members of Congress, with calls declaring that "The only thing standing between us and billions of barrels of American oil are Democrats in Congress."

House Dem Facing Tougher Race This Fall
CQ has changed their rating for the Pennsylvania seat of Dem Rep. Paul Kanjorski from "Safe Democrat" to only "Leans Democrat." Kanjorski easily won re-election in 2006, but this year he faces a very well-financed challenge from Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta.

Bush Sewage Plant Initiative Makes The Ballot In San Fran
A voter initiative in San Francisco to rename a sewage plant in honor of George W. Bush has received a sufficient number of signatures, and will appear on the November ballot. The idea was hatched by a group calling itself the "Presidential Memorial Commission," which by their own admission was formed over drinks at a bar.

Report: Hillary's Biggest VP Impediment Is Bill
Jill Iscol, a donor to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, told the Los Angeles Times that Barack Obama personally told her that Hillary Clinton was under consideration for vice president, but Bill Clinton's presence makes things "complicated." He said once you're a president, even if you're a former president, you're always a president," Iscol said.

Report: Hagel, Reed To Join Obama For Iraq Trip
Multiple news outlets have now reported that Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska conservative who has turned vocally against the Iraq War, will be accompanying Barack Obama on his upcoming trip to Iraq. Also along for the trip will be Sen. Jack Reed, a Dem point man on foreign policy, but Hagel's presence is far more interesting -- might he become a mirror image of Joe Liebemran, crossing party lines to support the Dem for president?

Both Nominees Taking The Day Off
Both presidential candidates are taking the day off today. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain have any public events scheduled.

Sebelius Not Denying VP Talk
In an interview with CQ, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius said that was not ever vetted for the vice presidency by John Kerry's team in 2004 -- but did not make the same statement about the Obama campaign this year. "Any discussion about this process is being done by the campaign itself," Sebelius said.

German Pol: Obama Shouldn't Speak At Brandenburg Gate
The leader of Bavaria's conservative party says Barack Obama shouldn't speak at the Brandenburg Gate, and accused the leftist foreign minister of pandering to the candidate. "Obama didn't do anything for German unification," Erwin Huber told the newspaper Welt am Sonntag. "That's not a criticism, but as a result there is no reason to grant him such a privilege."

Poll: Obama Leads In Missouri
A new Research 2000 poll in Missouri gives Barack Obama a 48%-43% lead in this swing state, with a ±3.5% margin of error. Most recent polls have given McCain the lead here, but the pollster's analysis in this case indicates that economic insecurity is increasingly driving voters into the Democratic column.

Possible Spoiler Candidate Files In Louisiana District
Some bad news for House Dems: Louisiana state Sen. Michael Jackson, who lost the special election Democratic primary to Rep. Don Cazayoux in a conservative district this spring, has filed to run in November as an independent. Jackson could potentially pick up African-American voters who might otherwise go for Cazayoux, thus splitting the vote in favor of the Republican in a district that Democrats just picked up.

There's been yet another odd twist in the story about alleged pressure by the Bush administration on the German government to block an Obama speech at Berlin's historically-charged Brandenburg Gate: The White House isn't denying the allegations.

At today's White House press gaggle, reporters asked for a comment on the charges...

"I'm not going to comment on any conversations," said White House press secretary Dana Perino.

"We have no view on the locations of candidates' speeches or events. Our position is that the candidates have to make their own decisions."

This is a bit odd. On one hand, Perino seems to be saying that the White House has no official and public position on whether Obama should deliver a speech before the Gate. But she isn't denying the charge that officials privately urged the Germans to nix the speech.

So here's where that leaves us. The one Bush administration official who supposedly expressed hostility to the idea on the record denies he ever did that. But respected German media outlets have reported, based on anonymous sources, that such pressure was privately brought to bear.

The German government denied this. But the White House didn't.

It looks like the story that the Bush administration pressured the German government to nix an Obama speech at Berlin's historic Brandenburg Gate is getting shakier.

The Treasury Department has just told me that stories in the German press saying that a Treasury official expressed open hostility to the idea are "not an accurate reflection of what he said."

As noted below, Der Spiegel cited another German press report quoting Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt saying this about the idea: "It would be nice if the German government would focus on strengthening its contacts to us rather than already beginning to look for our successors."

The quote reinforced the idea that the Bush administration was trying to tell the German government not to help Obama by facilitating the speech.

But Kimmitt's spokesperson Brookly McLaughlin, tells me that this is wrong. She says that the quote from Kimmitt was not a reference to the battle over the speech.

"This report is not an accurate reflection of what he said," she says.

Read more »

The story of the potential Obama speech at Berlin's historic Brandenburg Gate just gets stranger by the minute.

Here's the latest: Reuters is now reporting that the German government adamantly denys that the Bush administration put any back-channel pressure of any kind on Chancellor Angela Merkel to block the speech from happening. The Associated Press adds that Merkel says Germany will be able to work out its differences with Obama over this.

But Reuters adds a key detail, reporting that she still opposes the idea...

Merkel's spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said the Illinois senator was welcome in Berlin even if details of his visit are still unclear. He said, however, that Merkel had not dropped her objections to Obama speaking at the Brandenburg Gate.

Why the objection? Reuters says that Merkel doesn't want to see the Gate used for "electioneering," and called the idea "odd."

Perhaps no American official tried to nix the idea privately. But the fact is, we now know that one American official expressed his hostility to the idea on the record. Does the Bush administration have an official position on this, and does it have anything to do with Merkel's coolness to the idea? Weirder and weirder...

Yesterday I noted that Germany's Der Spiegel had reported that the Bush administration was privately trying to block Barack Obama from making a speech at Berlin's historic Brandenburg Gate.

Now Der Spiegel has more, citing another German report that actually has an American official on the record shedding light on what might really be going on here:

The German government, however, is more concerned with other possible side-effects of the speech. An overly warm welcome for Obama could anger the Republican candidate, John McCain, as it would not exactly be a good starting point should McCain be elected this autumn. Furthermore, any indication that Berlin is over-eager to see the end of the Bush administration is not likely to play well in Washington.

Indeed, Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt told the mass circulation tabloid Bild that "it would be nice if the German government would focus on strengthening its contacts to us rather than already beginning to look for our successors."

This American official is openly letting his hostility to the idea be known. Meanwhile, Ben Smith reports that his German-speaking readers have found reports in the German press saying that an American official "berated" a German official about the speech idea.

This definitely warrants some follow-up reporting.