Page 98 - Eric Meyer News Today

Readers of the Marion County Record in rural Kansas won’t be reading 98-year-old Joan Meyer’s folksy “Memories” column this week. Or ever again.

MARION COUNTY, Kan. (KOAM) - Authorities will return all items they seized from a Kansas newspaper last Friday.

After days of national controversy over the raid of a small town’s newspaper office and the publisher’s home, the items seized will be returned, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation announced Wednesday.

Kansas prosecutor finds insufficient evidence to support the police raid on the Marion County Record and says seized items should be returned.

It’s the stuff of a totalitarian regime: Police raided the offices and the home of the publisher of a small-town newspaper known for holding public officials accountable.

“They raise a lot of concerns and a lot of questions for us,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

It was the sort of conduct one usually associates with totalitarian governments: Law enforcement officers swarm a newspaper office and confiscate computers, servers and cellphones of reporters and editors. Yet

Marion Countys prosecutor said his review of police seizures from the Marion County Record found “insufficient evidence" to justify the raid.

Joan Meyer, 98-year-old enemy of the people, died in the line of duty on Saturday.

Opinion writer Terry Cowgill says the police raid of a weekly newspaper in Marion County, Kansas has enormous First Amendment implications, and as such the entire nation needs to watch closely what happens next.