White House puts Obama speech off limits to US government workers

Citing a little used and rarely-interpreted-this-way rule, the White House let all of its employees in the region know that they were not allowed to attend Barack Obama's speech in Germany today. In theory, US government employees serving oversees are not to engage in any partisan, political activity. I can both buy into and accept this theory. How, though, an American citizen attending a speech by a US Congressman, even one who is running for President, can be seen as overtly engaging in partisan, political activity seems a stretch to me. The chances that a German citizen would have spied an American in the over 200,000 people who attended Obama's speech today, identified that American as being an arm of the White House (I'm sure they left their, "I obey W" shirts at home), and then, from that, drawn the conclusion that W, himself, is endorsing Obama, are slim to none.

Barring a foreign service employee from brandishing Obama welcome signs, raising funds at the Democratic-voters-abroad-for-Obama bake sale, or protesting Obama's visit by wearing nothing but a wooden McCain placard, seems completely legit to me. But barring them simply from attending the speech seems slightly silly and severely undemocratic. History has shown, however, that the paranoia of this White House has no bounds.