Mount Misery Mind Games

Liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald is having a grand old time pointing fingers at some conservative bloggers who blasted the New York Times from running a fairly detailed puff piece about the St. Michaels, MD area that is home to Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld:

As I documented at length this weekend, Michelle Malkin, John Hinderaker, Red State, David Horowitz and many others of that sort spent the weekend engaged in the most vicious and self-evidently misguided attacks on The New York Times based on a puff piece in this weekend's "Escapes" section. Because the article contained a photograph of Don Rumsfeld's vacation home, they insisted that this was reckless and even retaliatory-- i.e., done with the intent to enable Al Qaeda operatives and other assassins to murder Rumsfeld (as well as Dick Cheney), and that it was further evidence of the war being waged by the NYT and its employees on the Bush administration and the U.S.

For so many obvious reasons, based on easily obtainable information -- including the fact that multiple right-wing news outlets such as NewsMax and Fox and others had previously disclosed this same information months earlier, that this information is commonly reported about government leaders in both parties, and the fact that we always know where our top government officials live and spend their weekends because they have Secret Service protection -- these accusations were as false as they were hysterical.

And let's face it—Greenwald knows hysterical, so I bow to his expertise. Unfortunately, I was too busy moving into my own country estate this weekend to comment at the time, but I still have some Monday morning quarterbacking to do all the same.

A large part of the controversy seems to revolve around the fact that Times artile not only spoke of the two homes, it actually provided a partial picture of the Rumsfeld home "Mount Misery" as shot from the street.

Here it is a bit closer, magnified as much as the JPG format will allow.

It is interesting to see how the house has changed over time. The photo of the home below was take back when Mount Misery was a bed and breakfast.

Here it is a bit closer, once again magnified as much as the JPG format will allow.

Interesting how things change over time, isn't it? The red brick Rumsfeld home (top photo) has taken on a new window over the front door since its days as a B&B (below).

Certainly, red brick federal homes all certainly look an aweful lot a like... you don't think that the Rumsfeld's might have used a "decoy house" to prevent the Times from revealing more "classified information," do you?