This sounds like it is straight from the Onion, but it isn’t.
Nunes has filed seven lawsuits against media companies, activists and the investigative research firm behind the Steele Dossier.
Please consider Devin Nunes’ attorney says he’s at ‘dead end’ in quest to reveal identity of Twitter cow.
Nunes, R-Tulare, filed a lawsuit against Twitter last year alleging he was defamed on Twitter by Republican political strategist Liz Mair and the writers behind anonymous social media accounts that call themselves “Devin Nunes’ Cow” and “Devin Nunes’ Mom.”
Nunes’ suit complains social media and Mair conspired against his re-election and harmed his reputation.
Nunes attorney, Steven Biss, demands Twitter reveal who is behind the Twitter accounts @DevinCow and @Mom_Nunes
There are many Mom handles but I believe that is the correct one.
Devin Nunes’ Cow Has 721,000 Followers
https://twitter.com/nonsmoknlifboat/status/1272171848567066624
Devin Nunes’ Mom
Defamed
https://twitter.com/KPenniall/status/1271649773968404480
Udder Failure
https://twitter.com/Infantry0300/status/1271955814908071936
Trump vs Nunes
The Nunes suit accuses Twitter of censoring because it allows Tweets from a cow.
Donald Trump threatens Twitter because Twitter amended his Tweets with tags suggesting Trump was Tweeting lies. Trump says that is censoring.
Vox reports that In 2017, Twitter filed suit against the government after it tried to compel the social media site to reveal the identity of an account that had been tweeting criticism of the president.
In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, Twitter revealed that the Department of Homeland Security in March had demanded that the company reveal who is behind @ALT_USCIS, an anonymous account that has been raising alarms about U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Trump’s immigration policies.
Twitter contends the request amounts to an “unlawful” use of the government’s investigative powers, as the rules that allow customs and border officials to issue summonses generally relate to the import of merchandise, including counterfeit goods — not information involving online accounts.
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, an ally of Silicon Valley in Congress, blasted the Trump administration for its conduct. “The Department of Homeland Security appears to have abused its authority and wasted taxpayer resources, all to uncover an anonymous critic on Twitter,” the Oregon lawmaker told Recode in a statement. He said the agency’s inspector general — a watchdog that reviews for abuse — should “investigate to determine who directed this witch hunt.”
Frivolous Lawsuits
Please note that Nunes was cosponsor of the 2017-2018 Discouraging Frivolous Lawsuits Act.
Nunes filed his lawsuits in Virginia but sources say neither the cow nor the cow’s mom ever lived in virginia.
House Intelligence Committee
Bear in mind Nunes is a ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee.
Lawfare notes that Nunes has also been involved in a number of controversial intelligence actions: A Timeline of the House Intelligence Committee Chairman: All the Nunes That’s Fit to Print.
New Cow Followers
I would not be aware of any of this were it not for the fact that Nunes hit a dead end suing a cow.
The number of people following @DevinCow just went up by at least one (mine) and I expect more to come.
Suppression of Ideas is Serious Business
Nunes’ Cow is both funny and serious.
I support Twitter’s right to amend Trump Tweets (it is their platform and they can set the rules for it) but I believe it is the wrong thing to do.
Twitter should not try to be the arbiter of what is fake news because it will make errors.
Instead, I suggest Twitter should continue to let Trump make a fool out of himself. Enough people will reply.
Welcome Back Zero Hedge
Yesterday, I commented Welcome Back Zero Hedge: The Thought Police Admit Error
After 6 months, Twitter admitted it made an error in “permanently” suspending ZeroHedge.
I commented:
Welcome Back
We can use a lot more of writers who are willing to speak their minds. But the risk of course is obvious, as a 6-month suspension shows.
You don’t have to like what he says, or how he says it, but please appreciate the fact that he can say it.
Questions of the Day
Q: Is Twitter going to catch everything Trump says that is a lie?
A: Of course not.
Also, Twitter might claim a Trump statement is false, when its judgement is questionable.
Finally, by trying to arbitrate such matters, people might accept Trump lies as the Truth simply because Twitter does not chime in.
Thought Police
A close friend of mine accurately summed up the situation as follows:
“The point of journalism and the point of educational institutions is to promote free and thoughtful inquiry.
But most Democrats will not speak out as they fear the wrath of the woke crowd just as Republicans fear the wrath of Trump.”
If you say anything at all against Trump you automatically are accused of having TDS.
And heaven help you if you run a newspaper and say something like White Lives Matter or Buildings Matter, because if you do, you will soon be out of a job.
The middle is very fearful of the radical Left and the radical Right. This is a very dangerous slope we are on.
In case you missed it, please see Trump and the Media Both Destroying Themselves.
It’s my take on excellent commentary by Matt Taibbi who accurately blasts Trump as a “clown” and more importantly, the media thought police who destroy journalism.
Mish
Support the Left’s free speech: Get a kush blog spot at The Street
Support Free speech against China: get banned off the Internet
Support Trump: get banned off the Internet
You really figured out how to grift the pink hats.
What if the Cow is Russian or Chinese. Wouldn’t that count as ‘interfering in our democracy’?
Things to do in countries where whether one has any freedom of expression at all, is solely up to the arbitrary discretion of a gaggle of privileged fratbros of lowest common denominator ambulance chasers and those who hire them……
A lawsuit over your hurt feelings is the pinnacle of manliness.
Why didn’t Nunes just pay the people off? Just make them a campaign advisors and pay them well and reap the rewards. Seems simple enough.
Love the Cow. Nunes is a dummy for making the Cow so much more popular.
We are on the train to chaos and nothing will derail it
This time and age being labeled as having TDS is a no evet if not a badge of honor. At least in most midsize and larger cities.
BUT, running a foul the protest-riot steam roller, one risks their job if not worse.
This is quie different! The latter feels rather authoritarian.
Fore example, dare you mention that all lives matter, that destroying property is wrong, etc.
“If you say anything at all against Trump you automatically are accused of having TDS.”
No, usually they call me a commie Hillary supporter.
I too was udderly unaware of all this Nunes.
I once tried to arbitrate as outsider to an online dispute in UK. The commentator had posted a sentence with very light swear words in it (that even the moderators used occasionally) and had his comment rewritten without his consent. The most obvious was that you don’t edit or delete or deface the comment of another without noting that you have done so, this should be well known. However we then went into who owns the comment, in this case under UK law. It turns out that the original author automatically owns IPR, however accessing the web site granted the site under its terms rights to modify or use freely anything posted. However this did not overide nescessarily the IPR of the author or misrepresentation of his work/writing. That is as far as I got figuring it out, and it does not seem set clearly in law. The author might have to prove that he was real, for example, and that he wrote the text, and the website might have to prove that its altering of the text was not vindictive, etc. etc. So it is very complex.
What I did find out while researching this was on liability, and in the UK a website can be held liable for content if it cannot prove who wrote it. What this adds up to normally is that a website will usually simply remove comments that are challenged as being offensive, because it has no wish to enter legal contest to defend comments of unknown author.
That makes sense maybe as long as it is used reasonably, but then you have petitions to remove content that are borderline, and the site has to start policing content the whole time, or worse finds itself in lawsuit and responsible for hosting a comment – if it cannot name the author.
So from there need to register identity and to verify that starts to appear, before being allowed to comment. Goodbye anonymity.
With twitter I find the above post difficult to frame, because I am not sure twitter has the identity of Nunes’ cow. The way twitter authenticates is via telephone number or say similar account that has telephone number registry as part of its set up. However a person can obtain authentic phone numbers that are not detailed to them, pay as you go numbers usually. Any identifying information can be avoided. So it is possible that twitter does not have the true ID of the account holder. Maybe in US you have to send in copies of ID or something to open a twitter account, but abroad you don’t have to.
Anyway, Nunes could really be a farmer with a very intelligent tech savy cow that he disagrees with and which he wants to formally discredit while proving he is a farmer after all , who is to say otherwise?
One way in which UK law differs is that compensation has to be based on actual loss suffered. Consequently there is less incentive to bring frivolous lawsuits.
That is what I understood also, but on the other hand the list of concepts deemed offensive keeps expanding, and I think that often just posting a racist/”racist” comment is enough to basically oblige it to be deleted ?
In Europe this is strict at a national level in various countries, Germany with questioning holocaust for example, and there I know site owners face liability if they don’t react. France as well is very harsh on the right, but I think directly via the judicial system on authors.
It’s a very chaotic and constantly changing battle ground of freedoms and restraints from what I make out. Sometimes it seems settled but if you read behind the scenes there is all sorts of contest going on.
Soon when you go to Walmart or Dollar General and have to dodge technicals and road blocks with burning tires then the once great nation you knew is gone…For good!
Maybe poor Devin is just in a bad moo’ed. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. LOL.
This is the funniest of the week, but it’s early.
A little history on the cow controversy….
IN 2019… California’s election code allows candidates to include a three-word description of their “current principal professions, vocations, or occupations,” or one they held in the previous year, beneath their name on the ballot….Reps. Jeff Denham and Devin Nunes say they’re farmers, and that’s how they’re going to be described on this fall’s California election ballots.
But are they farmers?
Democrats say no, and they’re trying to stop them from labeling themselves that way. The party is mounting legal challenges to California Republicans in the San Joaquin Valley over their using the word “farmer.”…
In 2020…For the first time in more than a decade, Rep. Devin Nunes is reporting that he owns a stake in a farm.
The new disclosure comes a year after Democratic groups accused Nunes, R-Tulare, of being a “fake farmer” and unsuccessfully challenged his description of himself as a farmer on California ballots.
Nunes reported on a newly released financial disclosure form that he owns a Tulare County farm that generates no income for him and is worth less than $15,000….
Is that what they call all hat and no cattle? He’s that kind of “farmer”?
Popular speech needs no protection.
Popular Tweets need no protection.
Trendy ideas need no protection.
You bet!
But truths are often lonely and intricate.
Along with almost all Americans I do not believe in free speech. I only believe in free speech that I agree with. Everyone with a different opinion should be hunted down like rabid dogs and shot.
This is why Mish’s site is the best. During my time here, I’ve seen people directing their criticisms at Mish, sometimes in a not so nice manner, but Mish simply shrugged them off. If you do the same in other sites i.e. you are not part of the same bubble, you’ll get kicked out ASAP.
You either believe in free speech or you don’t.
I do ban people if they call me an idiot, post ads, repeatedly mock me for the same thing over and over, harass others etc. But if someone disagrees politely I generally let them be.
Now I am afraid to bring up self-driving cars, I’ve been trying to convince you for years about their failings. So I won’t bring it up.
The comment threads here are often very interesting to read as well. It’s nice to have a variety of opinions. It’s in stark contrast to the dumpster fires that most comment sections are these days
The exact reason I continue to read and sometimes post here.
It’s pretty damned awesome.
Even the people I don’t agree with are (for the most part) pretty cool when we debate.
A far cry from social media or many other “discussion” sites.
Devin could have benefited massively from this cow by simply making it a joke. That would have taken the focus off the cow, and made him look like a guy with a sense of humour able to laugh at himself.
Unfortunately (and it seems to me that this is more true of the left than the right) free speech is long dead. A black colleague can shout, in an office meeting, that “white people are all divisive” and be applauded, but a simple question such as “why should I be called cisgendered? I am male and straight!” will get you shouted down, derided on the corporate intranet, and fired because the mob demands it. Real example.
Back to Devin, I do get why people on the right of politics are seeking legal redress, as the media is constantly twisting the narrative. But it will never solve the problem (not least because the media will shine whatever spotlight it wants).