President Trump is going after the Bill of Rights

[Commentary] Democrats -- and much of the “liberal” media Trump frequently attacks -- continue to obsess over clumsy Russian efforts to interfere with our elections as the challenge of our times to American democracy. But they could pay more attention to this ongoing assault on two of our most precious rights, enshrined in the Constitution and fundamental to the functioning of any free Republic: the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of expression and the Fifth Amendment’s protections against government taking of private property without due process of law. Trump's is a poorly-reasoned, emotional outburst against a newspaper which is hurting his feelings. President Trump may have a point on the liberal bias of some media, but he suppresses the effectiveness of his own speech by using the power of his office to cause financial harm to media companies, instead of documenting and calling out instances of anti-conservative slant. He should heed the words of another famous Kansan, celebrated columnist William Allen White, who once acknowledged there could be folly in free expression, but, “If there is freedom, folly will die of its own poison, and the wisdom will survive.”

[Sheila Bair is the former Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)]