Police raid of Kansas newspaper was stunning abuse of power

In a small city in Kansas, local police last week raided a community newspaper’s office, as well as the home of the paper’s co-owners, seizing computers, telephones and files. It was an almost unprecedented attack on the Constitution’s guarantee of a free press. We join journalists from across the country in expressing our anger at this assault on basic press freedoms. Raids of news organizations are exceedingly rare in the United States, because we have a long history of legal protections for journalists.