Free speech is fundamental to who we are in the United States. Use it wisely.

I'd sure hate to be on the other end of the lawsuits that are inevitably coming after that police raid on a little newspaper in Kansas earlier this month.

In case you missed it, police in Marion, Kan., confiscated computers, cellphones and other materials from the office of the weekly Marion County Record and from its owner's home during what they said was an investigation of identity theft.

The owner, who is also its editor and publisher, told the New York Times that the paper had received information about a local business owner that it was checking out, and that "the newspaper did not publish an article about the government record," though he said it had "received a copy from a confidential source and that one of its reporters had verified its authenticity using the state’s records available online."

So in summary, somebody brought the information to the paper, according to its editor, and the staff checked it out and ultimately decided not to publish a story about something apparently any of us could find online if we knew what we were looking for and had the means to find it.

Here's a clue about how the news industry works: We get information all the time, check it out to see whether it's credible (which can take a long time, by the way) and for reasons ranging from "is it true" to "is it in the public interest," decide whether it's right or ethical to use it.

And now, because of actions taken by the police department as a result of the business owner's complaint about a story that never ran, anyone on the planet who chooses to follow the aftermath now knows about the business owner's DUI, knows about the two DUIs issued to the magistrate who foolishly issued the search warrant and knows the police chief left the Kansas City, Mo., police force under a cloud.

Well played.

That being said, there are boundaries on the First Amendment protections for mass media, as illustrated by the recent $747 million settlement Rupert Murdoch's Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems to end a defamation suit over Fox claims regarding the 2020 election. Claims, by the way, the network apparently knew were false.

The clear message is that if you call yourself a news organization and play fast and loose with the truth when you know better, you're also playing fast and loose with the law. The question in the Marion case, however, has nothing to do with whether the material is true. It's whether using materials that were brought to the paper to verify the information constitutes identity theft. And the prosecutor apparently believes it doesn't.

There's a free speech issue a little closer to home that has a completely different nature.

It has to do with the use of banners or signs with offensive messages designed to criticize and insult individuals.

One of them I've seen myself more times than I care to count. It's a profane observation about an elected official that cites no particular reason for its vitriol. It's on a residential property and clearly visible from the road.

A reader sent us a photo of the another one last week. It appears to be on private property, but along a public county road. Its target is not an elected official, but a public figure whose philanthropy has financed a number of projects in Washington County.

"I’m sure parents with children in the car are distressed when driving by signs like this as would be any decent, rational person," our reader wrote.

That's because of all the four-letter words plastered across the sign, the least offensive is "woke."

"This is disgusting and there has to be something the county or the community can do about it," he pleaded.

But there might not be. Again, it's on private property. And while once upon a time the courts recognized "community standards" in matters of obscenity, particularly in regard to pornography, the no-holds-barred character of the internet has changed everything.

Unlike the internet, however, you can't just switch this off. It's a big sign along a public road that subjects every passerby to its profane attack on another human being with whom the sponsor apparently has a difference of opinion.

Freedom of expression is absolutely foundational to who we are as a nation. It is essential to a democratic republic. It must be defended with all vigor, as will be the case in the matter of the Marion County Record.

The individuals with the obnoxious signs actually have fewer boundaries than news organizations. But as has been said here before, with rights come responsibilities. And the determination to abuse those rights says a whole lot more about the people displaying the signs and banners than it does about the object of their ire. It reflects all the maturity of a 10-year-old, and it often backfires.

And why is that?

The obnoxious and offensive message frequently elicits sympathy for its target.

One thing both of the raid and the signs have in common is that they appear to be intended to intimidate.

And in neither case does it appear to be working.

Tamela Baker is a Herald-Mail feature writer.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: With rights come responsibilities — and the potential for abuse