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“I have to tell you that the most important thing we can do this Congress is to get voting rights done,” Democratic Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock says from the floor of the Senate.  “Voting rights are preservative of all other rights.  They lay the ground for all other debate.  So to my Democratic colleagues I say while it is deeply unfortunate, it is more than apparent that it has been left to us to handle alone the task of safeguarding our Democracy.  Sadly, many of our Republican friends have already cast their vote with voter suppression.  And so the judgment of history is upon us. Future generations will ask, ‘When the democracy was in a 9-1-1 state of emergency, what did you do to put the fire out?’ Did we rise to the moment? Or did we hide behind procedural rules?  I believe that we Democrats can figure out how to get this done even if it requires a change in the rules.”

Keith Kellogg, the former national security advisor to then-vice president Mike Pence was one of two high-profile witnesses to testify before the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress, Politico reports.

Testifying behind closed doors, Kellogg is expected to tell the committee about information Pence got regarding the J6 attack by Trump supporters and the efforts his office undertook to protect the vice president and his action to certify the November 2020 election.

The second witness is right-wing provocateur Dustin Stockton, whose lawyer told the media before his testimony that Stockton came with receipts:  records of communications with GOP members of Congress and Trump associates, urging them to attend the anti-election rallies and to hold up certification of the 2020 election and communicating in realtime as the assault took place. 

The vast retirement community of The Villages, Florida is fast becoming America’s most MAGA crime-infested shithole. National Zero can now confirm that Trump fan John Rider, 61, was arrested by Brevard County deputies as he stepped off a cruise ship in Cape Canaveral on December 3rd, served with a warrant for casting a ballot in both Florida and an unspecified other state in an unspecified election. This follows news of the arrests of Joan Halstead on November 30th and Richard Ketcik on December 10th for the same crime in the 2020 election. Unlike Halstead and Ketcik, Rider is an independent, though KPMG found pro-Trump Facebook posts from all three.

Meanwhile, a second female registered Republican Villager was arrested Friday for driving her golf cart under the influence last weekend. On Friday night, a Jennifer Lynn Clark, 58, was arrested following her declining a field sobriety test after a police officer “observed the driver exit the golf cart and pull her pants down and proceed to urinate”, Villages-News.com reports. Clark “could not keep her balance,” was “slurring her words”, and told the officer “I don’t think I can” when asked to take the field sobriety test, per the officer’s arrest report. The officer also reported finding “two open bottles of Fireball whiskey, two open cans of Michelob Ultra beer and two unopened bottles of Platinum 7X Vodka, located in a cooler” in Clark’s purple Yamaha golf cart.

Clark’s arrest came the night before the big annual Villages Holiday Golf Cart Parade, after which Karen Hackett drunkenly crashed her cart into a curb, injuring her passenger, and screamed anti-Biden profanities at EMTs who responded to the scene. Hackett was also arrested for DUI.

“We’ve heard a lot about text messages,” Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-Georgia)–who’s about to get another fine for not wearing a facemask on the floor of the House–drones as she tries to deflect the news that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was texting with Fox News personalities and members of Congress looking to get Donald Trump to call of his horde attacking the Capitol on January 6th.  “I’d like the Democrats and the people on the January 6th committee to produce their text messages, Mr. Speaker, denouncing antifa-BLM riots that raged across American cities for a year.  I would love to read those.”  She then went on to call Democrats communists and supporters of communism.

“Why were Fox News hosts texting him telling him that they needed to get the President out to stop this?” Wyoming Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney says during a review of the contempt charge against Mark Meadows.  “Why did they think the President was the one who could stop this because many of those same people now are, in fact, saying, ‘Gosh, this was just tourists.’  Or ‘This was a false flag operation,’ another person on Fox News has claimed.  So I think there are real questions about what those discussions were.”

“I was disappointed in one thing, but it was a big thing. Mike should have sent those crooked votes back to the legislatures and you would have had a different result in the election, in my opinion. I think Mike has been very badly hurt by what took place in respect to January 6. I think he’s been mortally wounded, frankly, because I see the reaction he’s getting from people” – Trump to “history tour” crowd, via CNN.

Right wing strongman Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte announced he would drop his 2022 bid for a seat in the island nation’s senate Tuesday, ending his second attempt to remain in the government in some capacity after his constitutionally-limited term in office ends, the New York Times reports. Duterte also dropped out of contention for the Vice Presidency in October, endorsing his top aide Senator Christopher Lawrence Go, to run instead.

Go also ended his candidacy on Tuesday. Duterte’s two inchoate attempts to remain in power to some extent were to maintain for him some level of political protection from prosecution, be it over the very real and very bloody campaign of vigilante killings aimed at drug dealers and traffickers that has killed thousands since 2016 or some made up charge prosecuted by political rivals.

Staff at the Daily Beast sat through 3 hours of Fox and Friends on Tuesday, a true test of will no one should be subjected to, in order to ascertain whether or not host Brian Kilmeade made any mention whatsoever of his text messages with Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on January 6th, finding that no, neither Kilmeade nor his cohosts brought it up in the Tuesday edition of the morning program. The Daily Beast’s Monday night staff also found no mention the messages on either Laura Ingraham or Sean Hannity’s shows, both hosts had texted Meadows pleading with him to get Trump to call off the rioters on the 6th as well. Which is good to see, because avoiding inserting oneself into a story is a sacred, bedrock virtue of journalism.

A festive occasion in The Villages, Florida was marred Saturday as annual holiday golf cart parade participant registered Republican Karen Hackett, 63, was arrested for DUI following a collision which tossed Hackett and her passenger from the vehicle, Villages-News.com reports. Karen, whom witnesses say was consuming alcohol at the parade, was headed home at 7:30 pm when her golf cart struck a curb, sending her and an unidentified passenger tumbling onto a lawn. When EMTs responded, Karen was hostile toward them, screaming “Get me [Governor Ron] DeSantis”, “I’m not vaccinated”, and “profanity aimed at President Joe Biden” per Villages-News’s reporting.

Karen and her passenger were both transported to a local hospital, where the boozy MAGA Villager was “belligerent” toward a nurse. Karen blew a range between 0.246 and 0.249 BAC in several breathalyzer tests, more than triple the legal limit of 0.08 in Florida. She was booked on charges of driving under the influence and disorderly conduct, and released on $2,000 bond.

One of Trump’s earliest Evangelical Christian supporters was “horrified” by Trump’s attacks on Former Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, the Washington Post reports. “Please, I beg of you, don‘t put us in the position to choose between you and Bible land, There is no possibility you can win again if Bible-believing evangelicals see you as the ‘F–k Netanyahu’ president who considers Abbas a father-like figure and blames the State of Israel, and not the Palestinians, for not making peace” wrote Christian Zionist Mike Evans, founder of the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem, in a letter shared with the Post, which also pleaded with Trump to “understand that Benjamin Netanyahu has much greater support among evangelicals in America than you.”

Evans presented Trump with a “Friend of Zion” award in a 2017 White House ceremony, at which Evans told the Orange Warlord “no American president in history has done more to defend the Jewish people” which kind of omitted the fact that it’s a completely transactional relationship.

Scientists are urging locals to be cautious as the Cumbre de Vieja volcano on the Spanish Canary Islands finally stoped erupting Tuesday, warning that the sudden stop may not last long, the AP reports. Announcing a cessation of recorded seismic activity, the Involcan monitoring agency tweeted “That does not mean the eruption has finished, because in the past this has been followed by a new surge in activity.” More than 3,000 buildings have been destroyed and thousands of acres of land have been buried in lava on the island of La Palma since the eruption began in September, though no deaths or injuries have been reported, thanks to timely evacuations.

The sailor charged with starting the fire that destroyed the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard was a Navy SEAL washout who was disgruntled about being assigned to the ship, the prosecutor in the court martial for Seaman Apprentice Ryan Sawyer Mays, the Associated Press reports.

In the opening day of the trial, prosecutors outlined a number of statements and actions Mays made in the days prior to the fire, which destroyed the ship.   The Navy ultimately decided to scuttle the ship because the $3.2 billion repair and replacement cost was more expensive than completely replacing the ship and equipment.

Shipmates say Mays was arrogant from his time at SEAL training, thinking he was better than doing “deck duty,” which includes cleaning the deck and picking up trash on the ship.  Witnesses said in the days prior to the fire, Mays swore at a superior.

The House of Representatives will likely vote on the contempt of Congress referral from the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol for former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows.

The House Rules Committee will meet at 9 a.m. ET Tuesday to vote on the passage of the referral, which will then be sent to the full House, where the House will vote on sending the referral to the Department of Justice.

Earlier, a similar motion was sent to the DOJ for Steve Bannon, who will be tried on the case in July 2022.

There was no Matthew Broderick and no critical game of tic-tac-toe, but the Space Force is hosting an international war game, simulating a foreign attack on American satellite interests to disrupt communications, Reuters reports.

With Russia destroying an orbiting satellite last month–a move that sent an uncountable number of shrapnel pieces scattering through space–to test its space capabilities, the US, Britain, Australia and Canada joined for the “Space Flag” simulation.

The 10-day exercise is the third such exercise with international partners and the thirteenth war game simulation the Space Force has held since it was formed nearly two years ago.

During the public session of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on Congress, Republican Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney read text messages Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, received from three Fox News hosts:  Laura Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade and Sean Hannity.

The messages weren’t looking for a comment.  They weren’t asking for confirmation of a rumor.  The messages were giving advice, urging Trump to come out of hiding and call off his supporters who were attacking the Capitol.  Somehow, during the coverage on Fox News of the events that day, none of those people mentioned they were consulting with the administration.

Georgia Republican Senate Candidate Herschel Walker’s son Christian says Biden’s responsible for gas prices that are “divisive to his bank account” and “hard-earned money”. Not sure exactly what his job is, but it must pay well if he can afford to buy a $1,295 Givenchy embroidered hoodie.

With a season-high 36 players being put on the COVID-reserve list Monday, the National Football League announced they would require all players, staff, officials and other league personnel to have a coronavirus vaccine booster by December 27th, the Associated Press reports.

“Given the increased prevalence of the virus in our communities, our experts have recommended that we implement the CDC’s recommendation,” the league said in a notice distributed to the teams Monday.

A supplemental shot to the main vaccine, boosters are typically given six months after the initial vaccination if the patient got the Pfizer or Moderna version, or two months after a Johnson & Johnson shot.  Studies have shown people who receive the booster have a significantly higher ability to ward off the coronavirus without serious symptoms.

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress voted by a 9-0 measure to refer former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadow to the Department of Justice for criminal contempt charges.