Congress shall make no law . . .abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of people to peaceably assemble. These words have guided the life of Frank Wilkinson, perhaps the nation's staunchest defender of civil liberties, to the degree that Life Magazine, in an issue given over to the two-hundred-year history of the Bill of Rights, featured a lengthy profile of him. This is the story of an ordinary, even conservative, American...