Obama emailed Hillary Clinton at private address, didn’t know ‘details’ of account

◼ “They did have the occasion to email one another. … He was not aware of the details of how that email address and how that server had been set up or how Secretary Clinton and her team were planning to comply with the Federal Records Act,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters. “The president did email with Secretary Clinton. I assume he recognized the email he was emailing back to.”

Mr. Earnest also said that all of Mr. Obama’s emails have been properly preserved in accordance with federal record-keeping requirements. As a result, all of Mr. Obama’s emails with Mrs. Clinton have been saved, Mr. Earnest said.

EARLIER:

◼ White House Suggests Obama Found Out About Hillary Email Scandal From ‘Reading The Newspaper’ - Charlie Spiering/Breitbart Big Government

Aboard Air Force One, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest indicated that President Obama probably found out about the Hillary Clinton email scandal from “the newspaper.” Earnest admitted he had “no idea” when Obama learned that Clinton was exclusively using a private email account based on a home server but that he “wouldn’t be surprised, however, if he had learned about that by reading the newspaper.”

◼ Valerie Jarrett: ‘I Don’t Know’ if Obama Officials Ever Received Emails from Hillary - Mediaite

◼ White House knew about Clinton´s e-mails in August - The Hill

Obama Learned Hillary was Using Private Emails, Same Way He Learned About IRS, VA and Fast and Furious Scandals | http://t.co/EUmHBN9utB

— Daniel Greenfield (@Sultanknish) March 8, 2015

"It's beneath me to be interviewed by you. You are a woman who..."

◼ Lebanese TV Host Rima Karaki Cuts Short London-Based Islamist's Interview following Insolent Remarks - MRCTV

“Shut up, so I can talk” is never a good way to ingratiate yourself with a TV host, but London-based Islamist cleric Hani Al-Seba’i actually said this during an interview with female reporter Rima Karaki for Al-Jadeed/New TV Lebanon.

He went on to say, “It is beneath me to be interviewed by you.”

She tells him, “There is mutual respect, or this conversation is over.”

Vacationer in chief: Tens of millions spent on 38 Obama holidays

◼ "staggering costs" - Paul Bedard/Washington Examiner

Costs are hard to pin down, and most come as a result of Freedom of Information Act suits from taxpayer watchdog Judicial Watch which pegged the Obama-Biden vacation tab at $40 million last year. That was before first lady and daughters took spring break in China, and the first family's annual summer vacation in Martha's Vineyard, Christmas in Hawaii, and this year's holidays.

For just a handful of trips, the Air Force and Department of Homeland Security have complied with the FOIA cases, but the costs of security, prepositioning of aircraft, staff housing and transportation and communications are typically not disclosed and are always covered by the government for every single president.

For example, Judicial Watch FOIA suits for just two vacations in 2013 produced flight costs of $5,250,624. But undisclosed are, for example, the costs of a trip to China last year by Michelle, her mom Marian Robinson and daughter Sasha and Malia....

"The Obamas are abusing the public trust and the taxpayers with unnecessary luxurious vacations and travel," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in releasing those details of flight charges to Martha's Vineyard and Hawaii. "These staggering costs show why these documents were covered up and we had to sue in federal court to get them. Another transparency fail for the Obama gang."

The White House argues that personal costs are covered by the first family, but critics say that those costs are a miniscule amount of any trip. And critics of stories like this one argue that presidents need to take breaks and their work never ends, even on holiday.

While former President George W. Bush took more vacation days than the estimated 175 by the Obamas, critics slap Obama because most of Bush's vacations were taken at his ranch in Texas, not the lavish digs he prefers in places like Hawaii and Martha's Vineyard, Mass. He has also criticized the rich.

CBS White House Reporter Mark Knoller, the unofficial presidential record keeper, calclates that the president has taken 22 vacation trips spanning all or part of 160 days.... KEEP READING

State’s Republicans seek rebranding as power, image erodes

◼ Republicans are down on their luck in California. They don’t hold a single statewide office, and their image isn’t getting any help from their colleagues in Washington, who seem unable to get anything done in Congress. - Carla Marinucci/SF Chronicle

Those problems have led some in the embattled party to conclude that the California GOP is in need of a rebranding, perhaps going so far as to de-emphasize the “R” affiliation in upcoming campaigns....

In a campaign that could emphasize stagnant wages and improvements to education — and not the divisive social issues Republicans have so frequently emphasized — “I won’t be going around with an 'R’ on my forehead,” Sundheim said.

State Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, a Republican from Oceanside (San Diego County) who announced his run for that Senate seat on Thursday, said, “The way that we’re going to win is that ... we’re not going to run a Democrat-Republican race. We’re going to run a California race.”

...“I don’t accept what Republicans have been doing for the last six years” in Washington, he said. Del Becarro said he believes President Obama acted unconstitutionally in issuing an executive order on immigration that has since been put on hold by the courts and which Republicans in Congress tried to tie to the Homeland funding, but he argued the party has failed to make its case. Last year, “Republicans won the (midterm) election ... but they’re not going out and talking to the American people.” KEEP READING

COMMON CORE KIDNAPPING: Parent Calls 911 After Public School Won’t Release Kid From Test

◼ The incident occurred at Brookshire Elementary School in Winter Park, Fla., reports the Orlando Sentinel. - Daily Caller

The unidentified mother showed up at Brookshire Elementary to pick up her daughter because she wanted to opt the fifth grader out of a Common Core-aligned writing test.

School officials informed the mother that they would not allow her daughter to leave, according to the mother as well as a second parent, Jacqui Myers, who was at the school.

Myers, the parent of a first-grade student, was on the scene at Brookshire Elementary because she is politically active in the local movement to opt students out of Common Core-mandated tests.

“They’re not giving me my child, can you help?” the mother of the fifth grader told Myers, according to the Sentinel.

Myers responded by calling 911.

An emergency responder notified police. The Winter Park Police Department dispatched a school district resource officer to Brookshire Elementary.

Brookshire principal Susan Mulchrone then arranged for the fifth-grade girl to appear in the school’s administrative office so she could leave with her mother, according to school district spokeswoman Shari Bobinski. KEEP READING

Clinton 'Family foundation accepted millions of dollars in donations from Middle Eastern countries known for violence against women and for denying them many basic freedoms'...

◼ Hillary Clinton Faces Test of Record as Women’s Advocate - AMY CHOZICK/New York Times via DRUDGE

It was supposed to be a carefully planned anniversary to mark one of the most important and widely praised moments in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political career — and to remind the country, ahead of a likely 2016 presidential campaign, about her long record as a champion for the rights of women and girls.

Instead, as Mrs. Clinton commemorates her 1995 women’s rights speech in Beijing in back-to-back events in New York, she finds herself under attack for her family foundation’s acceptance of millions of dollars in donations from Middle Eastern countries known for violence against women and for denying them many basic freedoms.

This was not how she intended to reintroduce herself to American voters.

Mrs. Clinton’s glide path to a likely April announcement that she will seek the presidency was built around women’s issues. Advancing women has been her central life’s work, as she and her admirers say proudly; she made it a priority as secretary of state and focused on it as a philanthropist. But that focus also allowed Mrs. Clinton, who played down her gender in 2008, to frame her second attempt at the White House in what could be one way to make it special and new: as a shot at history for her and for all women.

And for someone who has so long been lampooned, and demonized on the right, as overly calculating, playing up her gender as a strength would also allow her to demonstrate her nurturing, maternal — and newly grandmotherly — side to voters whom she may have left cold in the past.

Even her most strident critics could not have predicted that Mrs. Clinton would prove vulnerable on the subject.

But the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation has accepted tens of millions of dollars in donations from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Algeria and Brunei — all of which the State Department has faulted over their records on sex discrimination and other human-rights issues.