Let's achieve something straight. ...

Let's achieve something straight. There is sport. There is opinion. There is investigative writing.

There is sportswriting.

And there is something that makes all those things contemplate like specks of dust onward an asteroid.

Freedom of the pres

San Francisco Chronicle writers Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru- Wada were ordered last week by means of a federal judge in California to obey a subpoena and compute a grand jury who leaked them the sly testimony of Barry Bonds and other athletes caught in the BALCO rule steroid investigation.

U District umpire Jeffrey White told the pair, in quintessence talk or go to jail.

The pair have said they'll pass to jail.

Now, I spoke at long duration with Fainaru-Wada the other day, and he told me in measured and rational tones that the couple he and Williams, the co-authors of Game of Shadows, the work that spills the beans upon Bonds and the BALCO gang, are not attention-seeking commonalty have no desire to be martyrs or fare to jail or be more than what they are: writers doing what they do.

moreover they cannot reveal private sources because the conduct decides they must, he said, and to do in the same manner would undermine the very rectified portion of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

There are 45 words in that lean and precise article, and 14 of them are these: "Congres shall make no law abridging the freedom of language or of the press. "

There is a 1972 leading Court decision stating that no single is above the law and can refuse to testify before a federal grand jury

White cited that authority in past practice while reluctantly acknowledging that his hands were tied in this matter.

Freedom of the pres apparently had scud head on into a verbal wall.

"The court finds itself border by the law ... to subordinate [Fainaru-Wada's and Williams'] interests to the interests of the grand jury" declared White.

No.

Not now.

Not for aye

When law-abiding reporters are forced to change the direction of over their notes for the government's perusal, freedom of the pres is dead.

Buried.

There would be no more Woodward and Bernsteins.

There would be no more sway scandals and lies and deceit bareed by the investigative press.

In our little world of sport, we would at no time know about the steroid scourge in baseball, for instance. And bourgeon Selig would still be singing the praises for the drug-induced protracted ball.

CASE COULD REACH chief COURT

on deduction, private sources would no longer be talking privately to watchdog journalists; they would be talking to Big Brother himself.

If you think it would be in extent before those in power used grand juries to secure at journalists everywhere, you are naive.

Just last week U District justice Anna Diggs Taylor shot down President Bush's use of warrantless wiretapping of American citizens' phone writing in seeming disgust, "There are no hereditary Kings in America."

This is the point where those of us who call ourselves journalists -- especially we crusty, pontificating sportswriters who have affection for to tell owners and managers and star athletes to what degree to do their business -- should be pushed no further.

Fainaru-Wada and Williams have an appeal planned with the U Appellate Court, and it's possible that court will White's decision.

It's unruffled possible this case will continue up to the superlative Court, and that august corpse will deign to overturn or amend the 1972 decision that appears to put freedom of the pres in the same manner at risk.

on the contrary it doesn't matter.

As American sportswriters, we cannot stand idly according to and watch brethren railroaded on a government investigative group that has admitted it subpoenaed Fainaru-Wada and Williams because it's too inept to figure disclosed where the leaks came from forward its own.

'NOT EVERYTHING LEGAL IS RIGHT'

I instigate sportswriters everywhere to band together -- call me e- mail me e-mail each other, and we can all link up -- and we can say: This is where we will not be mov

I've been in this business a protracted time, and I cherish my freedom, and I've none been arrested for anything further the random traffic violation. unless if it came down to it, I would declare this and go to jail alongside those sum of two units men.

by what means could I not?

for what cause can we not?

Nor is this about political bent, liberal or conservative.

This is about who we are as independent Americans, what we stand for, what has made us who we are, what we cherish.

In 1992 a German referee set moral and legal prior instance when he found two former Berlin Wall soldiers guilty of shooting and killing a pair of East German citizens who were attempting to abscond to the West, even although the soldiers were obeying then-legal orders from their superiors.

"Not everything that is legal is right," justice Theodor Seidel wrote.

"It means a apportionment to me," Fainaru-Wada said when I told him I'm behind him.

Think by what means much it would mean to him and Williams if we're all behind them, and we all got their backs.

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