This story from the Kansas Reflector is fucked up and complicated so we’ll try to lay it out chronologically: Reporters from the Marion County Record recently found themselves very much unceremoniously booted from an event for Republican Kansas Congressman Jake LaTurner by the owner of an unnamed restaurant where it was being held. The Record said as much in an article, naming the owner, Kari Newell, as having ordered her staff to show them the door. Shortly thereafter an anonymous source sent the Record evidence that Newell had been convicted of DWI and was still driving around without a license – something that could jeopardize her business’s liquor license.

Publisher Eric Meyer thought that it was kind of fishy given that Newell is in the midst of a contentious divorce and didn’t like the idea of being a pawn in a game between her and her soon-to-be-ex spouse, even though a search of public records indicated that the restauranteur did in fact have a DWI rap. “We thought we were being set up,” Meyer told the Reflector. They went to the police instead of reporting it and, since no good deed goes unpunished, Newell then complained to the Marion City Council, which then for some fucking reason turned into a search warrant being executed on both the Record’s office and Meyers home on Friday, with computers and phones seized in a criminal investigation of potential identity theft and unlawful use of a computer charges.

“It’s going to have a chilling effect on us even tackling issues [and] a chilling effect on people giving us information,” Meyer told the Reflector. It’s also a violation of federal law prohibiting searching and seizing materials from journalists, requiring subpoenas instead. So yeah what’s a bad day for the fourth estate is probably going to end up becoming a bad year for the piece of shit right wing judge who signed the warrant as well as the cops and sheriff’s deputies who executed it.