Alaskans experienced a relatively balmy Christmas holiday, with temperatures reaching historic highs of 67 degrees Fahrenheit on Kodiak island and interior areas getting soaked under a deluge of rain when the region typically gets inches of snow, the Guardian reports.

Temperatures around the state have been running about 10 degrees above normal, with the normally dry December weather changed to rain, threatening towns like Unalaska with flooding.  Fairbanks has been hit by a storm unseen since 1937, which dumped inches of snow on the ground followed by a rainstorm, which iced over roads, roofs and fields.

“Ice is extremely difficult to remove once it has binded to the road surface. Even though air temps were warm during ‘icemageddon2021’, roads were at sub-zero temps, which caused ice to bind to the surface,” the state Department of Transportation said on Twitter.

On Saturday New Zealand Channel Three’s Oriini Kaipara became the first ever Maori woman (wahine) bearing a moko kauae traditional facial tattoo to anchor a primetime national news broadcast, Stuff.nz.co reports, anchoring the Sunday show as well. “It’s breaking new ground for us as Māori, but also for people of colour. Whether you’ve got a moko kauae or not,” Kaipara told Stuff.

And if you’re new to National Zero and this is the first article you’ve ever seen, allow us to clear up the confusion you might be experiencing: We’re an American owned and operated website. The “NZ” shorthand for our name is not meant to allude to New Zealand, though it did gain us an affinity for the country and at least a handful of Kiwis among our regular readers. They’re a fine people and put up with a lot of shit by having Australians as neighbors. Crikey, those people are scum-a-roo.

Trump spokesworm Taylor Budowich’s bid to block the House January 6th Select Committee’s subpoena for his personal bank records has been tossed by a federal judge as moot because the records were already turned over to the committee by JP Morgan Chase this week.

“This was punishment to Florida for opposing mandates for vaccines and magical cloth masks. The same left that constantly says ‘if it saves just one life’ decided to block a treatment that resulted in a 90% reduction in hospitalizations, for political reasons, and people died. The bigger question should be, why does the federal government have the power to deny medications and treatments to a sovereign state? That is what needs to be fixed more than anything. The swamp needs to be destroyed, and this can only happen through a convention of the states”

– The current top comment on the Townhall.com article “Florida Surgeon General Accuses Biden Administration of ‘Actively Preventing’ One Important Covid-19 Treatment“, posted Wednesday. The whole meltdown over this is extremely hard to parse. Of course it’s just DeSantis riling the fanboys up again, but over exactly what is the mystery here. And even if this asshole is right, and this is somehow “punishment” then why was that cool when Trump was president and he said Blue States should have to eliminate payroll taxes and sanctuary cities if they wanted federal virus aid?

Add me to the natural immunity club. The initiation sucked, but the worst is behind me. 🙌

— Lisa Boothe 🇺🇸 (@LisaMarieBoothe) December 27, 2021

Anti-vax Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe apparently tweeted that she had come down with COVID-19 on Monday, a day before the Daily Beast reported Boothe had been considered to take the permanent “Conservative” chair left empty by Meghan McCain on “The View” (a search that hasn’t been going so well for the show’s producers) but was rejected because she refused to get vaxxed. ABC probably won’t change their mind even though she’s in the “natural immunity club”.

An unnamed Irish citizen is under arrest after drunkenly breaking in to the Romanian Parliament Palace thinking it was his hotel, the Irish Sun reports. The man reportedly wasn’t sure how he got into the building – a 3,000 room monstrosity built by former Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu as his personal residence before he was canceled by democracy in 1989 – after stumbling upon it following a night out being Irish. Cops say he smashed a window to get in, making it to the third floor searching for his hotel room before being spotted. After a brief chase, he was apprehended and thrown in the Irish tank to dry out. Romanian security officials are reviewing the incident and trying to figure out why the potato-eating reprobate was able to break in.

Amanda Gorman, the 23-year-old National Youth Poet Laureate who came to the attention of the world when she read her poem “The Hill We Climb” at Joe Biden’s January Presidential Inauguration, had penned a new poem, called “New Day’s Lyric” commemorating 2021, the Associated Press reports:

What was cursed, we will cure.

What was plagued, we will prove pure.

Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,

Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,

Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake;

Those moments we missed

Are now these moments we make,

The moments we meet,

And our hearts, once all together beaten,

Now all together beat.

Former Dominion Voting Systems director of product strategy and security Eric Coomer has sued ReAwaken America tour organizer Clay Clark for defamation over Clark’s false claims of Coomer’s involvement in rigging the 2020 election, Tulsa World reports. Starting last December, Coomer has filed defamation lawsuits against the Trump campaign, Sidney “Kraken” Powell, Rudy Giuliani, OANN, Newsmax, the Gateway Pundit, far right podcaster Joel Oltmann, among others, over the false claims. Coomer’s lawsuit against Clark specifically charges Clark with amplifying claims from Oltmann – who is now “sick, sick” from “anthrax” he got at Clark’s most recent event in Dallas earlier this month. Clark found himself forced to address accusations that he was a member of the Illuminati and he had “attacked” fans using a fog machine at the event to deploy the “anthrax”.

All possible in a National Divorce scenario.
After Democrat voters and big donors ruin a state like California, you would think it wise to stop them from doing it to another great state like Florida.
Brainwashed people that move from CA and NY really need a cooling off period. https://t.co/NB2dVj7n2X

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) December 29, 2021

Terminal COVID-19 patients are eligible for government-sanctioned assisted suicide in New Zealand, anti-euthanasia advocacy group DefendNZ reports, citing an explicit answer to an inquiry to the Ministry of Health. “Eligibility is determined on a case-by-case basis, therefore, the Ministry cannot make definitive statements about who is eligible. In some circumstances a person with COVID-19 may be eligible for assisted dying” the Ministry of Health said in the reply.

The issue is probably mostly academic as only about 13,000 Kiwis have been infected and 51 killed by the virus in a nation of 5.1 million since March 2020. For comparison’s sake, South Carolina, a state with 5.1 million people, has seen 944,574 cases and 14,550 deaths since March 2020.

Missouri man David Smock, a doctor at the Agape Boarding School in Stockton, Missouri, was arrested in Arkansas on Tuesday night after fleeing from charges of second-degree statutory sodomy, third-degree child molestation of a child less than 14 years of age and enticement or attempted enticement of a child less than 15 years of age, KMOV reports.

Agape, which bills itself as “showing Christian love and care for the boys at all times” and teaching “proper behavior, responsibility, and strong goals in life; turning uncaring, self-centered boys into responsible and mature young men” has been the subject of multiple lawsuits by former students and criminal investigations over an allegedly rampant culture of abuse. Five other school staffers were charged with low-level felonies in September, a decision Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt blasted local prosecutors for. “[Cedar County Prosecutor Ty Gaither] has indicated that he does not intend to seek justice for all of the 36 children who were allegedly victimized by 22 members of the Agape Boarding School staff,” Schmitt wrote in September.

Freedom and personal choice claimed the life of prominent Italian anti-vaxxer Maurizio Buratti on Monday, the Daily Beast reports. Buratti, 61, a frequent caller to the national radio show Zanzara, had boasted he was “defending the constitution,” recently told the hosts he walked through a local supermarket while seriously ill with something that he wouldn’t get tested for – because the testing swabs themselves were transmitting the something up people’s noses, he claimed. “Rest in peace wherever you are, old conspiracy theorist. I only hope your sad story serves as an example to all those who are still fueling doubts about the efficacy of vaccines,” said Zanzara host Davide Parenzo after announcing the freedom-lover’s loss on air this week.

Oregon man Jared Schmeck, the now MAGA-famous Christmas Eve “Let’s Go Brandon” assclown, said he may have some political ambitions on right wing podcaster Todd Starnes’s show Tuesday, Newsmax reports. “I want to get through this. I want to pray about it, see what God has for me. At the end of the day, I want His will for my life and the direction that it goes … And I strongly believe that standing up is the right thing to do here as long as that message that I’m portraying is glorifying His name. And yeah, I’ll see where it goes once I get out of this tornado” Schmeck said.

Definitely not going to jail. Sorry I have blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and I'm not going to jail. Sorry to rain on your hater parade. I did nothing wrong

— Jenna Ryan (@dotjenna) March 26, 2021

Texas “Private Jet Karen” Capitol rioter Jenna Ryan, who wasn’t due to begin her 60-day prison sentence until early January, showed up to a federal facility on December 23rd to get an early start, the Dallas Observer reports. The Observer quotes a prison consultant, Daniel Wise, who said the early surrender was probably a stunt to drive sales of Ryan’s book deal. “I have to imagine that there was a motive behind this, and your motive probably is: You want to go in there, now you can write in your book what it was like to be in prison for Christmas,” Wise said of the Christian recording artist. “I mean I think people are going to see right through the smokescreen. I don’t think you’re going to get a lot of sympathy.” Ryan pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges over the insurrection in August after failing to secure a presidential pardon for herself in January.

“That is the same reaction I’m having over all of this,” Fox guest (and failed Barbie plastic surgery model) Jeri Shanteau, a sports network ad sales representative and former college swimmer a decade and a half ago says.  “How do we not understand that if we do not use sex as our identifier we are going to make women obsolete, in general, and not just in athletics.  It is a standard which we use because male bodies competing against women does not uphold what we believe in fairness in sport and it will trickle down to everything else in life.”

Ah, Ms. Shanteau, Renée Richards came out 45 years ago, and there doesn’t seem to be a big issue with transgender athletes… ‘cept on Fox.

A fifth victim, a hotel clerk, has died due to gunshot injuries received in the Tuesday spree shooting that started in Denver and continued in a city suburb, Reuters reports, with most of the victims at two tattoo shops.  The shooter was killed in a gun battle with police.

The Denver Police identified the gunman as 47-year-old Lyndon James McLeod, a man the Denver police chief said had been the subject of state and federal investigations, although he wouldn’t say what allegations were being investigated.  No motive has been uncovered, but police say he knew four of those killed; McLeod apparently did not know the hotel clerk.

McLeod was killed by a Lakewood, Colorado police officer whom McLeod shot when she confronted him.  The officer, shot in the abdomen, underwent surgery yesterday and is expected to survive.

The Chinese government has arrested six journalists with the last pro-democracy newspaper operating in Hong Kong and charged them with sedition, the latest move in a crackdown in the once autonomous region, NBC News reports.

Hundreds of police raided the offices of Stand News, dragging six employees, including some members of the senior staff, away to face charges of suspicion of “conspiracy to publish seditious publications.”

In June, Chinese authorities effectively shuttered the other major pro-democracy media outlet in Hong Kong, Apple Daily, by charging its senior management team with a variety charges ranging from corruption to sedition.  Earlier this month, government officials removed a monument to the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre from a Hong Kong university.

https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1475903577201819652

“David Lee Judd faces felony charges for his alleged involvement in the Capitol riot. He now asks the Court to compel production of internal Government communications about its charging decisions. He argues that the Government has prosecuted him – a conservative – more harshly than liberal defendants accused of similar behavior during the riots that plagued Portland in the summer of 2020. Although he raises some troubling patterns in the Portland prosecutions, Judd has not shown that he is similarly situated to those defendants… He cannot do so.”

“Although both Portland and January 6 rioters attacked federal buildings, the Portland defendants primarily attacked at night, meaning that they raged against a largely vacant courthouse. In contrast, the January 6 rioters attacked the Capitol in broad daylight. And many entered it. Thousands of congressional staffers walked the Capitol’s corridors that day. So did hundreds of legislators and the Vice President, all of whom appeared for a constitutionally mandated proceeding. Putting aside any claims that January 6 rioters sought to tear down our system of government (an allegation not made against Judd), their actions endangered hundreds of federal officials in the Capitol complex. Members of Congress cowered under chairs while staffers blockaded themselves in offices, fearing physical attacks from the rioters” writes DC Federal Judge Trevor McFadden – a Trump appointee – in his opinion rejecting Judd’s lame attempt to have various charges incurred during the Capitol riot against him dismissed.