Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
Ryan Callahan scored for the fifth time in four days and defenseman Ryan McDonagh snapped a second-period tie to lift the New York Rangers to a 3-2 victory over the Washington Capitals on Sunday.
Kobe Bryant hit a baseline jump shot with 4.2 seconds left and the Los Angeles Lakers wrapped up a six-game road trip by holding on to beat the Raptors 94-92 on Sunday, their eighth victory in nine meetings with Toronto
Arc's five up, five down: After No. 11 Michigan State's 58-48 upset of No. 3 Ohio State, you'd be a fool to discount the Spartans' national title chances now.
Miami coach Al Golden says the worst is behind him, but his headaches figure to continue now that former booster Nevin Shapiro, now in jail, says his involvement with the Hurricanes program will result in stiff penalties.
Golf's dream pairing - Woods and Mickelson - is on the course in the final round at Pebble Beach. Jason Sobel has hole-by-hole reports.
The United States completed a 5-0 rout of Switzerland in the Davis Cup on Sunday, with 19-year-old Ryan Harrison and John Isner winning closing singles matches.
Euro Roundup: First-place Manchester City won 1-0 at Aston Villa on Sunday on Joleon Lescott's goal in the 63rd minute, maintaining its two-point lead over Manchester United in the Premier League.
Tessa Worley of France fought off gusting winds to win a second consecutive World Cup giant slalom Sunday in the Andorran Pyrenees. Overall leader Lindsey Vonn was more than a second behind and finished eighth.
Robins: It’s the Year of the Dragon on the Lunar calendar, and this Chinese influence could extend to it also being the year of the Pekingese on the green carpet at the 136th Westminster Dog Show on Tuesday.
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BALCO reporter speaks out Aug. 16: San Francisco Chronicle reporter Mark Fainaru-Wada says he shouldn't have to reveal his confidential sources. |
SAN FRANCISCO - A federal judge told two San Francisco Chronicle reporters they must comply with a subpoena and tell a grand jury who leaked them secret testimony of Barry Bonds and other elite athletes ensnared in the government’s steroid probe.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White means reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada must appear before a grand jury investigating the leak unless a higher court blocks the ruling. The pair have said they would not testify and would go to jail rather than reveal their source or sources.
“Lance and I are firmly standing behind our sources,” Fainaru-Wada said shortly after the decision.
The two reporters published a series of articles and a book based partly on transcripts of testimony by Bonds, Jason Giambi and others who testified in the grand jury investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. Known as BALCO, the Burlingame-based nutritional supplement company was exposed as a steroid ring.
The criminal conduct being investigated in the Bonds leak case includes possible perjury and obstruction of justice by government officials, defendants in the BALCO probe and their attorneys. All of them had access to the documents, but have sworn they weren’t the source of the leak.
The government told White that its investigation has turned up empty, and that Williams and Fainaru-Wada are the last hope of finding the culprit or culprits.
In his ruling, White said his hands were tied by a 1972 Supreme Court precedent that no one, including journalists, was above the law and may refuse to testify before a federal grand jury.
White added that Congress has not adopted a shield law to protect journalists from testifying before grand juries. Most states have shielded reporters from testifying on behalf of the government in state criminal probes.
“The court finds itself bound by the law governing this case to subordinate (the reporters’) interests to the interests of the grand jury,” White ruled.
The Hearst Corp., owner of the Chronicle, argued that the reporters should be immune to testifying because of a combination of factors, including the First Amendment.
Hearst said it would appeal the ruling.
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“We believe we will ultimately prevail and that is clearly what is in the public’s best interest,” said Eve Burton, the company’s general counsel.
Hearst argued that the leak doesn’t involve national security and that a lot of good has come from the writers’ reporting.
As a result, it said, Major League Baseball toughened its steroids-testing policy, as did track and field. Sentences for steroid distribution were strengthened, and the public awareness of the dangers of steroids was raised.
The government discounted that the pair’s reporting on the topic was cause for such results.
Williams and Fainaru-Wada reported, among other things, that Bonds denied knowingly using steroids when he told the BALCO grand jury that his trainer had given him what he thought was flaxseed oil and arthritic balm. That trainer, Greg Anderson, was convicted of steroid distribution charges in the BALCO probe.
Another grand jury is investigating whether Bonds committed perjury during that 2003 testimony.
Williams and Fainaru-Wada are the latest reporters ordered to testify before a federal grand jury investigating government leaks. New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for 85 days last year for refusing to testify in an investigation into the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s name.
Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are handling the leak probe and declined to say when they would order the pair before the grand jury.
The case is United States v. Fainaru-Wada, 06-90225.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
DeMarco: Plug in a well-heeled ownership group and negotiate one of those mega-bucks TV deals that are going around, and the Dodgers could become the west coast version of the New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox.
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Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.
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Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.
