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A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled in favor of North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein in his bid to duck being prosecuted for allegedly violating a law criminalizing false and “derogotory” statements in political advertising as unconstitutional, Politico reports.

The investigation stemmed from an ad in which Stein’s campaign called out his 2020 Republican opponent, Forsyth County DA Jim O’Neill on his office’s handling of rape kits. O’Neill had lodged a complaint with the State Board of Elections in September 2020 over the Shapiro attack ad, which said his office had “left 1,500 rape kits sitting on a shelf,” an assertion O’Neill said was false because law enforcement and not prosecutors are responsible for processing that evidence.

ULTRA MAGA House Oversight Committee Republicans will EXPOSE the BIAS at Twitter from before Elon Musk pissed away $44 billion on it, and DEMOLISH the libs for interfering in the 2020 election by blocking the Hunterghazi laptop story! Or more likely just look like complete assholes as the witnesses, including former FBI counsel James Baker, run circles around them.

Ahead of his testimony on Wednesday morning, Baker, who left the FBI in December 2017 and then served as Twitter’s general counsel from June 2020 until Elon Musk fired him in the middle of the “Twitter Files” circlejerk in December 2020, published his opening statement, writing “I was not aware of and certainly did not engage in any conspiracy or other effort to do anything unethical, improper, or unlawful while I was at Twitter. Period. I understand that the Committee is interested in, among other things, the Hunter Biden laptop and Twitter Files related to that. To be clear, I did not act unlawfully or otherwise inappropriately in any manner with respect to Hunter Biden’s laptop computer. Indeed, documents that Twitter has disclosed publicly reflect that I urged caution with respect to the matter and noted that we needed more information to fully assess what was going on and to decide what to do, hardly a surprising piece of advice from a corporate lawyer. Moreover, I am aware of no unlawful collusion with, or direction from, any government agency or political campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation.”

Dutch prosecutors on Wednesday said it was likely that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin had personally signed off on the decision to supply pro-Kremlin separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine with the missiles that in 2014 downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, killing all 298 passengers and crew, the Washington Post reports.

The prosecutors however said that although the had amassed “strong indications” of Putin’s involvement, it wasn’t enough to file charges against the angry little bastard just yet.

When told by Fox and Friends’ Steve Doocy about polling indicating that independents were turned off by the constant heckling from Republicans during Biden’s State of The Union speech, putative House Speaker Kevin McCarthy admitted that his shushing had been pointless because he can’t control how “passionate” they are and then tried to blame it on Biden for “goading” them.

Democrats went 3-for-3 in a set of special state House elections in Pennsylvania Tuesday, securing a 102-101 majority in the chamber, the first after 12 years of GOP control, the AP reports.

An exemplar of right wing governance and anti-woke policies, the Russian Federation, is considering increasing taxes on its citizens, lighting their hard-earned rubles on fire to fund the ongoing war in Ukraine while inflation skyrockets and grocery shelves are empty, the Moscow Times reports.

The exact details of the tax hike are still being worked out, however there is talk of killing jobs by forcing large companies to make a one-time “voluntary contribution” to the budget to support spending, according to anti-socialist crusader Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov.

A Manhattan federal judge on Tuesday denied disgraced former President Trump’s attempts to delay facing trial in the defamation and rape lawsuit brought by writer EJ Carroll over a sexual assault from 1995 and set the start date for April 25th, the New York Daily News reports.

It’s not clear yet whether the original 2019 federal defamation case brought by Carroll will definitely be combined with the New York state rape case she filed in November 2022 immediately after a new law came into effect temporarily opening a window for victims to pursue civil complaints otherwise expired by the statute of limitations. Trump did himself no favors in an October deposition, as his claims that Carroll wasn’t his “type” were blown up when he twice said a circa-1995 photo of Carroll was his then-wife Marla Maples before being corrected by his lawyer.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a surprise visit to Britain on Wednesday, only his second trip outside of Ukraine since the war began last February, the BBC reports.

Zelensky was met on the tarmac by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and is expected later in the day to make an address to British Parliament and to have an audience with King Charles III as well.

The official death toll from a series of massive earthquakes in southern Turkey that also shook neighboring Syria on Monday rose past 11,000 on Wednesday, becoming the deadliest earthquake worldwide in since the 2011 Japan quake and tsunami, the Associated Press reports.

Los Angeles Lakers superstar Lebron James became the all-time NBA scoring champ with a 21-foot jump shot from the foul line, topping previous record-holder Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s 38,387 points, ESPN reports.

In her official Republican response to President Joe Biden’s fiery and authentic State of the Union address, first-year Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee-Sanders repeated the GOP talking point that baselessly claims everything Biden says is a lie and everything is horrible because of CRT and drag queen story times in our schools.

In what can only be called a “very, very bad” response, Huckabee-Sanders detailed her personal fight with cancer, announced that she would debut a new education program tomorrow (that of course will bar lessons about race, gender, sex, and any other religion than the one she approves), and then went on an exceptionally long-winded and ultimately pointless story about a Christmas trip she took with Donald Trump to visit troops in Afghanistan when she was White House press secretary because… yay, her?

Lying shitbag Congressman George Santos on Tuesday spoke with Semafor’s Kadia Goba about a brief exchange he had with Senator Mitt Romney in the House chamber prior to Biden’s State of The Union speech, claiming that the Utah Republican (correctly) told Santos “You don’t belong here.”

“Go tell that to the 142,000 that voted for me,” Santos allegedly said, to which Romney allegedly then replied “You’re an ass.” Santos then allegedly told Romney he’s “a much bigger asshole.” Video seems to indicate Romney said something closer to “You’re embarrassing,” so it’s certainly possible Santos misheard him as saying “ass.” Either way it’s clear Mitt doesn’t think highly of George.

From the outset, Joe Biden’s second State of the Union address was a unique one, with congratulations to Speaker of the House pro tem Kevin McCarthy as a sign of bipartisanship but peppered with interchanges between the President and the Republican side.

With McCarthy alternatively attempting to look actively bored to shushing disrespectful liars from his caucus, Biden controlled the stage, turning heckles from Republicans into a public pledge that they will not threaten Social Security and Medicare as the debt ceiling crisis approaches.  Biden deftly used policies promoted by Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott during the midterm elections to turn Republicans against themselves.

Biden pushed for an assault weapons ban–after which cameras caught Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (Q-Colo.) looking forlorn in the audience–and promised to veto any abortion ban that may slip through Congress. 

Folks, let’s come together and finish the job of providing National Zero readers with a review of President Joe Biden’s State of The Union speech. We’re making progress here, so let’s finish the job by finding a pathway to writing it. Folks this was a good speech, you can recognize it in the amount of applause which was 27 percent higher than last year. 27 percent. But we’re not done yet.

Look folks, that 27 percent number we made up. That’s unacceptable. Unacceptable. My friends on the other side of the aisle are criticizing that number, but let’s come together and find a number that works for all Americans. Working families. Look, we have an obligation to the men and women who read National Zero to provide them with an estimate of how much better it was this year.

Look folks, it was a good speech. The president used the same turns of phrase over and over and over again, but let’s finish the job and agree that it was substantively a solid speech highlighting Biden’s accomplishments in plain language, easy enough for Americans to understand. Let me be clear, it will be so much more positive and palatable than Sarah Huckabee’s shitty rebuttal.

With a theme of “we can finish the job,” President Joe Biden will recap the successes of his first two years in office including record job creation, pandemic recovery and infrastructure investment in his second State of the Union address, essentially a CV for Biden’s reelection campaign.  Biden will also preview his agenda for the last two years of his first term, putting before the American people his goals versus those of Republican Speaker pro tem Kevin McCarthy.  Republican Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckleberry Huckabee will follow with the opposition response which will undoubtedly invoke Hunter Biden, balloons, the wall and numerous false claims about how Republicans are bringing accountability to Washington.

Former MAGA Congressman and failed 2022 Republican New York State gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin is looking at failing to unseat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in 2024 – or losing even worse to AOC if she knocks off Gillibrand in the Dem primary, the Albany Times-Union reports.

His monologues are typically disinformative, but as the Fox lead-in to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, Tucker Carlson decided to erase Trump and/or the pandemic from a series of before/after comparisons, and of course, blame Biden for all of it, saying of the speech, “We don’t expect a single honest word.  We hope we’re surprised, but we don’t expect to be.”  We’re not surprised by Tucker’s distortion of reality to manipulate his audience.  It’s what he does.  He does that. He lies.  Some examples:

“Since his predecessor, Donald Trump, gave his final address to a joint session of Congress”–This is how Carlson prefaces the first set of comparisons between how Trump left office and the present condition.  For those who don’t see Carlson’s deception:  Trump’s last SOTU was February 4, 2020, before he mismanaged the federal response to the pandemic and set the US economy reeling.  So Tucker just un-histories that whole thing.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un appeared publicly on Monday following a 35 day absence that had fueled speculation that the obese, chain-smoking millennial with the health of a 75 year-old diabetic from The Villages, Florida, had finally expired and gone to commie hell, Fox News reports.

As usual Kim ordered his military to increase drills and its state of readiness for conflict with capitalist enemies such as South Korea, Japan, and the United States for whatever fucking reason it’s been so long nobody even remembers. State media reported Kim is “constantly expanding and intensifying the operation and combat drills” and “more strictly perfecting the preparedness for war.”

The charismatic conductor Gustavo Dudamel is leaving Los Angeles to become the new music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic. https://t.co/2eTSZdvaKd

— NPR (@NPR) February 7, 2023

You will not be surprised to learn that former FBI Special Agent Nicole Parker, testifying Thursday at Jim Jordan’s first “Weaponization” committee hearing alongside “Hindu” New Age death cult fascist Tulsi Gabbard and Republican Senators RonAnon and Old Man Grassley, is a regular Fox News contributor who hates her former employer for being too “woke,” Talking Points Memo reports.

TPM editor Josh Marshall clips from an op-ed Parker wrote for FoxNews.com in which she decries an episode following George Floyd’s murder in 2020 when a group of FBI agents in tactical gear kneeled in front of BLM protestors to deescalate the situation. “On top of that, there was no reprimand for any of the agents who knelt that day. In fact, many ended up getting highly sought-after promotions and were offered $100 gift cards by the FBI Agents Association,” Parker wailed.

Parker has appeared on Fox News TV a few times, but judging by her resume (posted to the Miami field office) and that her op-ed mentions nothing material to the actual shit Jordan’s subcommittee is supposed to be investigating – as in the FBI being “weaponized” to take down Trump and his minions – we’re now even more excited for this “blockbuster” hearing on Thursday.