There it is, first stolen documents were bad and the perps should be punished. But a year later when stolen emails were posted in misleading snippets to falsely portray an international conspiracy among climate researchers the conservative disinformation machine, including the Heartland Institute, was giddy with excitement. Now some docs reportedly indicating the lengths to which that same org will go have been published and they have suddenly rediscovered their moral compass and are back on the fainting couch. From Heartland’s legal shills threatening DeSmogBlog:

Several of the documents say on their face that they are confidential documents and all of them were taken from Heartland by improper and fraudulent means. Publication of any and all confidential or altered documents is improper and unlawful. … Heartland views the malicious and fraudulent manner in which the documents were obtained and/or thereafter disseminated, as well as the repeated blogs about them, as providing the basis for civil actions …

As DeSmogBlog points out, either the docs were taken from Heartland and they’re authentic, or they’re fabricated in which case they weren’t stolen. Heartland seems to want to have it both ways, and they’d also like to have it both ways on stolen documents in general. Here’s just a taste of what the same Heartland bozos had to say on the emails stolen from climate scientists in 2009:

This is new and real evidence that they should examine and then comment on publicly. … For anyone who doubts the power of the Internet to shine light on darkness, the news of the month is how digital technology helped uncover a secretive group of scientists who suppressed data, froze others out of the debate, and flouted freedom-of-information laws.

Heartland is caught red-handed with a glaring double standard here. Like Fox News, they loved stolen documents when they could be spun to persecute climate scientists. But now they have a sudden and expedient change of “heart” in the Heartland, where such behavior is ‘malacious and illegal,’ up to issuing take down notices and threats to anyone who publishes the material. What a bunch of clownish dopes.