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PHOENIX -- Widening his war with the media, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas lashed out Tuesday at the operators of a web site run by The Arizona Republic and KPNX-TV for posting a link to his home address.

Thomas acknowledged that the story on azcentral.com does not list his home address in northeast Phoenix but simply provides a link to a document filed in the Maricopa County Recorder's Office. That document is the personal financial disclosure statement that all candidates for public office are required to file.

But Thomas, in demanding that azcentral.com take down the link.

``You can go out, you can scratch up personal information about just about everybody in America,'' he said, adding that ``we've had presidents assassinated.''

``But there is a big difference between that and rounding up this information, putting it on a web site that gets over a million hits a day, when we prosecute 40,000 felony cases a year here,'' Thomas explained. Calls to both the TV station and newspaper were not immediately returned.

The county attorney said the publication endangered not just him but his wife and four children age 3 to 14, and he now is having investigators from his office guard them, at county expense.

``Tonight I'm going to have to go home and explain to them why armed men from this office are now going to have to escort them to and from school and be posted in front of our home for the indefinite future,'' he said.

``This is a reckless and cowardly act,'' Thomas said. ``It is contemptible and enough is enough.''

Thomas made note of the 1999 state law which makes it a felony in some circumstances to place the information of police and prosecutors on the web. That is the same law that a special prosecutor he hired used to investigate Phoenix newsweekly New Times for publishing the address of Sheriff Joe Arpaio on its web site.

On Friday, Thomas dropped that investigation -- and the arrest of two top New Times executives for disclosing a grand jury subpoena -- saying his special prosecutor had committed ``missteps.'' But he still blasted New Times for publishing the information in the first place.

Thomas said Tuesday he does not intend to bring criminal charges against the newspaper, the TV station or the web site operators -- all affiliates of Gannett Co. -- ``because I'm not willing to turn these people ... into some sort of martyr.''

``They're not,'' he continued. ``It was a cheap stunt and they've endangered my family.''

The law makes it a crime to publish personal information about police, prosecutors and judges -- but only if it poses ``an imminent and serious threat,'' and only if that threat is ``reasonably apparent'' to the person posting the information.

The web site story, listed as written by KPNX reporter Brahm Resnik, discussed the New Times flap and said Arpaio's address is ``widely available'' elsewhere on the World Wide Web, including the county's own web site.

Thomas said he has used a provision of state law which allows prosecutors and others to demand that personal information be removed from web sites maintained by county recorders. But Karen Osborne, Maricopa County's elections director, said that law applies only to ``recorded documents,'' like deeds, and not to papers required to be filed by candidates with the county.

Thomas said he did not call the newspaper or TV station to have the posting removed, saying he did not want anyone to claim they had been improperly pressured. Instead he called the press conference to make that demand publicly.

Thomas said it is ``no secret'' that The Arizona Republic opposes some of his policies, ``particularly illegal immigration.'' Thomas, with the help of Arpaio, has used a 2006 state law its sponsor said was aimed at smugglers to also prosecute the entrants themselves.

``But this is too much,'' he said.