Photograph by Michael Gottschalk/AFP via Getty Images

Barack Obama leaves the stage after making a speech in front of the Victory Column in Berlin in this July 24, 2008 file photo.

Aboard Air Force One, en route from Belfast to Berlin:

The traveling White House tonight explained the expected message — and “optics” — of the speech that President Barack Obama will deliver facing East from the Brandenburg Gate in the German footsteps of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton — and of course Jack Kennedy, who bonded with the West Germans at the Rathaus Schoneberg in 1963.

“The historical context is important here,” said Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications — a guy (speechwriter) whose words have a way of finding their way into the president’s mouth. “Any time a U.S. president speaks in Berlin, it’s a powerful backdrop to our post-war history. And it’s the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s speech where he declared, “Ich bin ein Berliner” — I hope I got that.”

“But also, this is a place where U.S. presidents have gone to talk about the role of the free world essentially, whether it was President Kennedy or President Reagan standing at the Brandenburg Gate,” he said. “And so, with that historical backdrop, I think what the president wants to — the message he would like to send is that sometimes it’s easy to think that history is behind us, essentially. The wall is down. There’s not a threat of global nuclear war. The threats that we do face are far more distant.”

“The overarching point that he’s going to make is the exact same level of citizen and national activism that was characterized in the Kennedy speech and in the Cold War needs to be applied to the challenges we face now, even as they are more distant from our own lives — whether they are nuclear arms control and non-proliferation, climate change, counter-terrorism, the resolution of conflicts and the need to promote democratic values for people beyond Europe and the United States — so beyond the Western world,” Rhodes told reporters flying with the president. “So I think he is seeking to summon the energy and legacy of what’s been done in the past and apply it to the issues that we face today.”

Then there was this: Obama, as a candidate for president, made his European debut with a splash at another public speech at Berlin’s Victory Column attending by multitudes chanting “Obama, Obama, Obama.”

“It’s also, obviously, returning to a city that he visited as a candidate in 2008,” Rhodes said. “And I think he will be speaking at the Brandenburg Gate with the experience of the last five years, which includes an extraordinary amount of new direction in our foreign policy in terms of ending the war in Iraq — which was the predominant issue in the campaign — winding down the war in Afghanistan, beginning to look beyond the framework of the global war on terrorism that we inherited.”

Obama drew a big crowd in 2008, Rhodes was reminded — offered a chance, perhaps, to lower expectations about tomorrow’s audience.

“Well, it’s a different kind of speech,” he said. “The German government really arranged the speech. They extended the invitation to the president. They believed, as we did, too, that the Brandenburg Gate, given its history of U.S. presidents — President Reagan, President Clinton — speaking there, that that is an appropriate place to do the speech.”

“Given the fact that he is the president of the United States now, we will be I think addressing — the assembled German government will be there. In other words, so there will kind of an official component with the kind of leaders of German government and society, as well as we’ve made sure with the Germans young people and university students, because really that’s the audience that the president enjoys speaking to when he travels abroad.”

“It’s notable for a number of reasons,” he said. “He’ll be facing East, which obviously was not possible for instance when President Reagan gave his speech. The new U.S. Embassy has been built. The new Reichstag has been built. So he is going to be speaking in a square that essentially symbolizes the transformation of Berlin. But that brings with it — a different type of venue, in that it’s a square. It’s thousands of people in one of the most historic settings in the world, essentially, including both official participation and young people, and Berliners of different walks of life.

“A lot has changed. But I think the president’s affinity for the German people and, frankly, his connection with them remains the same.”

And if there’s no overwhelming crowd chanting “Obama, Obama,” they can blame the government.

Original post is Obama in Berlin Encore: Ich Bin Ein ‘Citizen of the World’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Jacob “Jack” Lew, U.S. treasury secretary, during an interview in Washington, D.C.

Updated at 2:05 pm EDT

Jack Lew had some work to do.

With his personal signature, that is.

President Barack Obama said so, when he nominated his chief of staff to serve as Treasury secretary.

Lew has reported back now, on the Treasury’s Twitter page.

Coming to a currency near you this fall:

Here it is. Secretary Jack Lew’s official #signature as it will appear on U.S. currency starting this fall pic.twitter.com/Jvid5uOgBA

— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) June 18, 2013

It’s, well, better. The swirling loop-de-Lew that had passed for his Hancock was a subject of much amusement at the White House. But now that he goes by Jacob J. Lew, secretary of the treasury, the question of his mark on the currency is no laughing matter. Lew had assured Obama “that he is going to work to make at least one letter legible in order not to debase our currency,” the president said at Lew’s nomination.

Note: Treasury’s tweets today called him Jack.

The secretary already had shown signs of refining his signature in public letters — such as one reporting on the Social Security and Medicare trustees’ predictions. (It was almost legible, and appears to have found its permanent home now.)

This is a big deal. Treasury secretaries have been signing greenbacks for almost 100 years:

Treasury Secretaries have had their #signature appear on U.S. currency since 1914. Today at 2pm EDT we will share the latest addition.

— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) June 18, 2013

Treasury answered the long-awaited $1 question with a heads-up to watch for Lew’s news:

Secretary Jack Lew has provided his official #signature for printing on U.S. currency. See it first @USTreasury today at 2pm EDT

— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) June 18, 2013

Still,  it will take some time before Lew’s new signature is on the street:

Takes about 18weeks to implement series change for each dollar denomination. This includes manufacturing engraved plates with new #signature

— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) June 18, 2013

Original post is Lew’s News: Signature Fit for Circulation — See it Now (Online) by Political Capital.

Ultimately, the FEC could not decide whether the group, American Issues Project, violated the law by failing to register and report as a political committee.

FEC staff lawyers said in a report that AIP appeared to have broken the law, and they recommended the agency pursue an enforcement case.  Yet Republican and Democratic commissioners deadlocked along party lines in a vote on staff recommendations, meaning the case was dismissed without a definitive legal ruling, according to FEC documents.

AIP funder Harold Simmons, a major Republican donor, was let off the hook by the only clear ruling in the case. The FEC commissioners voted to find Simmons did not violate PAC contribution limits because such limits are no longer valid, due to court decisions in the intervening years since the 2008 election.

However, the FEC deadlock on the main issue in the case—when a political group becomes a PAC—leaves unanswered a key legal question that has lingered and grown through the 2012 campaign and up to the present day.

With the FEC unable to rule on which organizations must follow campaign finance rules, including disclosure of their funding sources, the IRS has been asked more and more to determine which new organizations conducting political activities are eligible for tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(4)—the part of the tax code governing “social welfare” organizations.

Such organizations have an advantage over FEC-registered PACs because, under the tax law, they can keep their funding sources secret. The groups operate as nonprofit corporations and are becoming increasingly active in campaigns following the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, which said corporations can make unlimited independent expenditures to influence campaigns.

The FEC has three Republican commissioners—Caroline Hunter, Donald McGahn, and Matthew Petersen. There are two FEC Democrats—Steven Walther and Ellen Weintraub—with one Democratic seat vacant. The votes of at least four commissioners on the six-member panel are required for any final ruling. Consensus has been lacking at the FEC in recent years, however, with the commissioners splitting along party and ideological lines on many key issues.

That is what happened in the case of the American Issues Project. The group faded from public view after Obama was elected president in 2008, but it made headlines in the summer months of that year by spending $3 million on ads linking Obama to Ayres and the Weather Underground, the 1960s radical group that was described as a `terrorist organization.”  The ads asked if voters “know enough” about Obama to elect him.

Obama’s campaign said the ads distorted the facts to smear Obama and help defeat him in the presidential race. The campaign called loudly in 2008 for the Justice Department to investigate AIP’s alleged criminal violations of campaign finance laws in sponsoring the messages without registering as a PAC.

The group claimed that it was operating legally, though it took a lower profile after the public flap with the Obama campaign.

All of AIP’s money for the anti-Obama ads came from Simmons, who has continued to fund similar organizations up through the last election. The Dallas businessman and his wife provided nearly $27 million to Republican-leaning organizations in the 2012 campaign, according to FEC reports compiled by the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics.

A staff report from the FEC general counsel’s office concluded that AIP should have registered as a PAC and followed stricter reporting requirements. The counsel’s report suggested that the agency pursue an enforcement case and perhaps seek a fine in the case.

Original post is Obama vs. Simmons: FEC Deadlock by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference, June 14, 2013 in Washington, DC.

It’s about winning, Jeb Bush says.

David Brody, of “The Brody File” at the Christian Broadcasting Network, may have heard what we heard at last week’s Faith and Freedom Coalition: a Jeb Bush speaking a different line from Ralph Reed’s.

Brody sat down with Bush for an interview Friday — airing on “The 700 Club” today — in which the host asked about the state of the Republican Party: “Where do you see evangelicals’ role in all of this? Because really, there is somewhat of a fight for the soul of the Republican Party. Many evangelicals feel the culture is not where it needs to be and it’s going down pretty quickly.”

And Bush replied: “I think we could focus on all our disparate parts, all of the points of disagreement that conservatives have and never win again. My general thought is that the focus ought to be on how you get fifty plus one. Not how you win amongst forty-five. ”

“And that’s kind of where we are where everybody has a view that’s slightly different than one another and certainly social conservatives are a huge part of a winning coalition which means that we have to change our language to be inclusive but not abandon principle and that’s not as hard, I think, as people make it out to be.”

Original post is Jeb Bush: ‘Fifty Plus One’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A protester holds a sign reading, ‘Rubio: Don’t Oppose Family Unity’, as she joins with others in front of Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) office on May 22, 2013 in Doral, Florida.

There’s a lot of death talk surrounding immigration reform.

Will the bill itself, hailed as the magical medicine for the revival of the Republican Party, die in the Republican-run House?

Will passage of the bill kill the chances of any Republican associated with it in the party’s 2016 presidential primaries?

Marco Rubio is the one Republican who stands perhaps the most to win, or lose, from the immigration bill he co-authored.

“Dead to me,” conservative radio talk show host Steve Deace says of Rubio’s standing among Republicans in Iowa.

It doesn’t matter who the party runs in 2016, says Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican working with Rubio and the other six members of the bipartisan Gang of Eight on immigration. If the party doesn’t get it right on immigration this year, he says, it can forget 2016.

“I would suggest a guy like Jeb Bush would have a really good chance in 2016,” Graham said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” Sunday.

Bush is co-author of a book, “Immigration Wars,” which takes a middle ground approach toward reform: “We propose a path to permanent legal resident status for those who entered our country illegally as adults and who have committed no additional crimes of significance,” he and co-author Clint Bolick write. “Permanent residency in this context, however, should not lead to citizenship.” Yet, Bush too, has said he can live with citizenship if that’s the consensus.

Nothing short of that path to citizenship will satisfy the Democrats in the Senate, where leaders hope to amass 70 votes for their bill before July 4 to increase pressure on the House for action. Citizenship, it’s been clear all along, could kill it in the House.

So in strengthening the bill as it moves through the Senate, Rubio is attempting to keep the focus on border security.

“The vast majority of Americans, the vast majority of conservative Republicans are prepared to support immigration reform, but only if we can ensure that we’re not going to have another wave of illegal immigration in the future,” Rubio said on ABC News’ “This Week” Sunday. “And so I think they have pointed to valid criticisms of how the border security plan is structured in the bill, and quite frankly very reasonable ways to address it.”

Consider either Bush or Rubio among the party’s best prospects down the road, neither at this point committed to a national campaign.

Consider immigration reform critical to their party’s future, in that life and death spiral.

“If we don’t pass immigration reform, if we don’t get it off the table in a reasonable, practical way, it doesn’t matter who you run in 2016,” Graham said on “Meet the Press. “We’re in a demographic death spiral as a party, and the only way we can get back in good graces with the Hispanic community, in my view, is pass comprehensive immigration reform. If you don’t do that, it really doesn’t matter who will run, in my view.”

It’s not only Hispanic voters with whom the Republican Party must reengage — having lost 71 percent of the vote to President Barack Obama last year. It’s also Asian-American voters, who voted in even greater numbers for Obama – the real “canary in the coal mine,” Bush says.

Yet consider immigration, still, a problem within the party that forced Mitt Romney to stake a position untenable in November.

“If I know anything about the Iowa caucuses, it’s that Marco Rubio shouldn’t even bother showing up in 2016,” Deace writes in a Politico commentary today. “Sure, if you ask state party officials and some other big names, they’ll say all the politically correct things about Rubio’s chances publicly to preserve the process, plus Iowans are nice. But privately I’ve heard “Rubio is dead to me” from plenty of conservatives.”

Original post is Republican ‘Death Spiral:’ Life-and-Breathless Immigration Debate by Political Capital.

Photograph by Sam Hodgson/Bloomberg

A truck sits parked at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Otay Mesa Port of Entry cargo facility in San Diego, California, on June 7, 2013.

While the Obama administration’s trade ambitions are getting bigger, its trade office within the Commerce Department is getting smaller. Slightly.

The agency’s International Trade Administration is reorganizing so it can focus on promoting U.S. exports and enforcing trade rules, according to its top official.

“We’re consolidating from four business units at ITA to three,” Under Secretary for International Trade Francisco Sanchez said at a National Foreign Trade Council lunch Friday in Washington. That means the elimination of at least one  assistant secretary position and a reduction in staff that will be achieved primarily through attrition, he said.

The administration is now pursuing the two biggest trade deals in U.S. history, one with a group of Pacific region nations and another with the 27-nation European Union. The president has also said he wants to consolidate some of the trade-related functions of the bureaucracy, and he’s pledged to double U.S. exports — to about $3.14 trillion annually — by the end of 2014.

The latter goal is proving increasingly elusive: The U.S. exported a record $2.2 trillion worth of goods and services last year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

“It has always been a stretch goal,” Sanchez said, though he wouldn’t venture to guess the final export number for next year.

The agency consolidation, already approved by congressional appropriators, will be complete by Oct. 1, Sanchez said. It will create divisions focusing on global markets, industry and analysis and enforcement. Any money the agency saves in the revamp is being plowed back into export promotion and policing trade rules, according to Sanchez.

“We’re not giving it back to the Treasury,” he said.

Original post is Obama Trade Offices Streamlining — Treasury Isn’t Getting Money Back by Political Capital.

Herb Simon, the Indianapolis real estate developer who owns the Fever, joined the president at the White House.  Simon also owns the women’s team’s male counterparts, the Pacers.

Both the Pacers and Chicago Bulls – the president’s hometown team – were knocked out of the running for the basketball championship earlier this year by the Miami Heat.

The Heat has reignited after a couple of losses. The defending NBA champion beat the San Antonio Spurs in Game 4 of the 2013 Finals last night to tie the series. Game 5 will be Sunday in San Antonio.

“We will get even next year,” Obama joked.

Original post is Obama: Bulls ‘Will Get Even Next Year’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, his wife Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and their daughter Chelsea Clinton speak to guests at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) on June 14, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois.

Is this why we have Twitter?

Having so much fun with Chelsea, taking selfies back stage. MT:@ChelseaClinton http://t.co/QXvdrgDH7n

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 14, 2013

Chelsea started it:

My first #selfie w my mom @HillaryClinton back stage at #CGIAmerica. #ProudDaughter pic.twitter.com/84sEBHsRGn

— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) June 14, 2013

The former first lady started tweeting from a new personal account this week — the one that bills her as a “pantsuit afficionado” and ` hair icon.”

In a matter of days, she sailed past her daughter’s account, which has 222,461 followers. Mom is closing in on a half-million followers with that account teasing future plans as “TBD.”

So a lot of people are guaranteed of seeing some “selfies” this Friday afternoon.

Original post is Hillary, Chelsea Clinton: ‘Selfie’ Fest by Political Capital.

Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Hillary Clinton, former U.S. secretary of state, speaks during the Clinton Global Initiative CGI America meeting in Chicago, Illinois, on June 13, 2013.

Hillary Clinton criticized Washington’s budgetary gridlock as she helped raise money for epilepsy research last night in Chicago, returning as the keynote speaker for an annual event hosted by the top strategist of her former political nemesis.

As first lady in 1999, Clinton had spoken at the first annual fundraising dinner for Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE) before its founders, Susan and David Axelrod, were nationally known because of their close ties to President Barack Obama. David Axelrod’s team helped Obama defeat Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries, and she went on to serve the Obama administration.

The former U.S. secretary of state said funding for the National Institutes of Health had been “slashed” because of sequestration to the tune of $1.7 billion.

“More than 30,000 scientists and staff will lose their jobs,” Clinton said. ”We risk losing the next generation of medical researchers,” she said. “This impact is not hypothetical. It is already being felt in labs across the country.”

Clinton said the sequestration would translate into delays in new drugs and medical devices.

“We need to be very loud and passionate about the continued research funding that is necessary,” she said. “I do think there has to be a greater awareness on the part of the American people about what this will mean, not just today and next week, but in years to come.”

The potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate didn’t blame either side of the political debate, instead criticizing Washington as a whole.

Tickets for the event, which drew a sold-out crowd of more than 1,000, went for $350 and up. Organizers said it raised $1.4 million.

In an earlier speech yesterday to the Clinton Global Initiative America meeting in Chicago, the former first lady drew her loudest applause when she talked about the importance of women being involved with politics.

“When women participate in politics, the affects ripple out across society,” she told about 1,000 business, government and foundation leaders in a hotel ballroom. She called boosting opportunities for women and girls the “great unfinished business of this century.”

Clinton said she plans to focus on early childhood development, opportunities for girls and women and economic development and jobs. She highlighted her international travel as secretary of state under Obama as she talked about challenges globally.

Turning to the domestic front, she expressed concerns in the current economy. “In too many places in our own country, community institutions are crumbling, social and public-health indicators are cratering and jobs are coming apart,” she said.

Original post is Hillary Clinton: Medical Research Hampered by Budget Cuts by Political Capital.

Photograph by Bryan Denton/The New York Times via Redux

Syrian rebel fighters with the Sham Falcons fighting group, one of the Islamic groups fighting with the Free Syrian Army, during a firefight with government forces in Heesh, Syria, on March 10, 2013.

Syria has crossed the ”red line,” the Obama White House says.

And the Syrian opposition will be getting more assistance from the United States — not only humanitarian aid, but also still publicly unspecified stepped up support for the military council opposing the Assad regime.

While the use of chemical weapons in Syria has been widely reported for some time, the administration said today that it was seeking “credible and corroborated information to build on that assessment and establish the facts with some degree of certainty. ”

“Following a deliberative review, our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year,” National Security Council spokesman Ben Rhodes said in a statement issued by the White House this afternoon. “The intelligence community estimates that 100 to 150 people have died from detected chemical weapons attacks in Syria to date; however, casualty data is likely incomplete. While the lethality of these attacks make up only a small portion of the catastrophic loss of life in Syria, which now stands at more than 90,000 deaths, the use of chemical weapons violates international norms and crosses clear red lines that have existed within the international community for decades. ”

While the administration works to build a “credible, evidentiary case to share with the international community and the public,” Rhodes said, President Barack Obama has decided to respond with stepped up assistance to the opposition — without detailing what it is.

Some Republicans have been calling for stronger U.S. intervention for some time. “It is long past time to bring the Assad regime’s bloodshed in Syria to an end,” Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner said this afternoon. “As President Obama examines his options, it is our hope he will properly consult with Congress before taking any action.”

Obama has made it clear that the use of chemical weapons “is a red line for the United States,” Rhodes said, and that  “he use of chemical weapons would change his calculus, and it has.”

Obama has stepped up  “non-lethal assistance to the civilian opposition, and also authorized the expansion of our assistance to the Supreme Military Council,” he said, “and we will be consulting with Congress on these matters in the coming weeks.”

“These efforts will increase going forward,” said Rhodes, without specifying what sort of tactical assistance is involved. . “We are prepared for all contingencies, and we will make decisions on our own timeline,” he said. “Any future action we take will be consistent with our national interest, and must advance our objectives, which include achieving a negotiated political settlement to establish an authority that can provide basic stability and administer state institutions; protecting the rights of all Syrians; securing unconventional and advanced conventional weapons; and countering terrorist activity.”

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona has been pressing for a no-fly zone over Syria and U.S. military assistance for the rebels.

“I applaud the president’s decision,” McCain said on the Senate floor today.

Still, the administration’s move faces a certain amount of skepticism.

Obama to arm Syrian Rebels with pocket knives confiscated by TSA agends. Also large quantities of bottled water, shampoo, conditioner.

— Grover Norquist (@GroverNorquist) June 13, 2013

Original post is Obama Boosting Syrian Aid: ‘Red Line’ Crossed by Political Capital.