Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig ASNIC.US. NS
Answer
ASNIC.US. 5 NS ns33.domaincontrol.com.
ASNIC.US. 5 NS ns34.domaincontrol.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0