Michelle Malkin now ‘allows’ that there was no threat from the NYT printing the story. But she persists in seeing a threat. Her reasoning: what other possible reason could there have been to run the story? In her words:

Why?

What news value and journalistic end was served by publishing the Cheney/Rumsfeld vacation home piece and the accompanying photo? “Because Rumsfeld gave permission” may cut it with the moonbats and fairweather privocrats. Not with me.

Has this woman never read a newspaper in her life? More likely, she knows that newspapers sometimes print pieces in the Travel section that highlight the homes of famous people. It happens all the time. But Malkin refuses to acknowledge the possibility, instead seeing a ruthless scheme to terrify and intimidate people like Rumsfeld and Cheney:

Leftists scoff at my observation that there is a concerted effort to dig up and publicize the private home information of prominent conservatives in the media and blogosphere to intimidate them.

Well, there is a reason we scoff: she’s an idiot. Look at this page, also in the New York Times. The page is full of articles the Times did on Bill Clinton in his new home in Chappaqua, complete with street names and photos of his house.

So now are we supposed to believe that the New York Times was on a multi-year spree of intimidation against President Clinton? Or is Malkin simply being an idiot? Hmmm….

But here’s the punch line:

Conservative readers have asked me to publish the private home addresses of NYTimes reporters, editors, and photographers.

My response: NO.

I refuse to do it. I strongly urge others not to do it. Your home is your castle. It should be, anyway. There are some legitimate, narrow circumstances under which publicizing a private home address makes sense (the Kelo case, for example, or the counterprotest at Justice David Souter’s New Hampshire home, or documenting the erosion of the California coastline). But “For The Hell Of It” is not one of those reasons, in my book.

Aside from the obvious irony of Malkin saying “NO” with vehemence and then giving not just one but three exceptions, there is the fact that Malkin herself has posted personal information of people she doesn’t like strictly for the purposes of intimidation.

If you will recall a story from a few months ago, a group called Students Against War (SAW) protested at a college military recruitment area. When the students issued a press release with home phone numbers clearly intended for press contact only, Malkin published all the information on her web site, an open invitation for her readers to call and assail these people; no other reason was plausible. She wanted to intimidate people like that, figuring if they were stupid enough to give their home numbers on a press release (as if college students had an office with phone operators), then it was their own damn fault if she published them and they got hammered with threats and harassment. After it was reported that these people were being mercilessly hounded by Malkin’s Moonbats, including many death threats, they asked her to remove the information.

Malkin’s response? She tried to cover her ass by updating her original post to say that she did not condone death threats, and then she reprinted the phone numbers, spurring on yet more harassment. And what reason did she give for doing so? None. Apparently, she did it for the hell of it.

In fact, Malkin played the martyr today by linking to the web sites of extremists on the left who published her home contact information (in response to Malkin releasing the home contact information of the students)–as if that’s the same thing as Malkin and Horowitz doing the same to others on a national platform (and doing it first), or that this somehow excuses her own actions.

Even more bizarre, Malkin herself brings up the SAW incident as if there’s nothing to it on her side of things, and throws a confusing spin on it:

The reactions were predictable: the usual moonbats accused me of hypocrisy by dredging up and lying about the infamous episode with UC Santa Cruz anti-military thugs who retaliated against me for republishing their public contact info by broadcasting my private home address and publishing photos of my neighborhood.

Retaliated? Follow the link she gave with the word “retaliated.” It goes to another of her posts. In that post, there is no evidence of SAW retaliating against her, just a claim. There are several links on that page. None of them lead to any evidence that SAW retaliated against Malkin in any way. Here is SAW’s home page. See if you can find them printing her home contact information. Nothing I can see. Nothing whatsoever to indicate that SAW had any hand in it. Did others post her home information? She does link to that elsewhere, as noted above–but the site linked to has no connection to SAW, except possibly one of sympathy. Not to mention that the people who just as thuggishly posted her home number were in New Jersey, not Santa Cruz. Apparently, people to the left of center all look alike to her.

But she uses this as if to clear herself. So, Malkin is excused for her own thuggery because she was able to find extremists somewhere who did to her what she did to others first? Huh?

But apparently, Malkin sees her own delusion of SAW’s activities as a valid excuse for her own, enough so she can bring up what she did and dismiss it by saying that someone else did the same thing in retaliation.

Certifiable. Add another name to the roster: Limbaugh, Coulter, O’Reilly… Malkin. Thuggishly insane people proudly representing the vanguard of the right wing.

If there are conservatives who have gotten this far, kindly tell me: how do you tolerate slimeballs like that representing your side?

Update: This web site shows that incredibly detailed information on Cheney’s house was available in news stories and on the web last year, including arial and on-the-ground photos (many listed by the realtor), including exact home addresses and much more. What was available on the web for many months now makes the NYT story look positively obfuscatory.