Free Republic

You may have seen today's above-the-fold Chronicle headline, "No torture used in manhunt" for Osama bin Laden. I don't see how that headline made it into the paper without an attribution that makes clear that the story is based on statements by Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Be it noted, the Chronicle uses the word torture to describe "enhanced interrogation techniques" or detention techniques, including, but not limited to, waterboarding.

The White House threatened Thursday to exclude The San Francisco Chronicle from pooled coverage of its events in the Bay Area after the paper posted a video of a protest at a San Francisco fundraiser for President Obama last week, Chronicle Editor Ward Bushee said.White House guidelines governing press coverage of such events are too restrictive, Bushee said, and the newspaper was within its rights to film the protest and post the video. The White House press office would not speak on the record about the issue.Chronicle senior political reporter Carla Marinucci was invited by the White House to cover...

The wind sheer, hypoxia, and rapid decompression of the newspaper business. The mad scramble for frantic answers, like a meth freaks' weekend convention in Vegas. The lost jobs, dirgeful despair, and sometimes mean sniping over tradition and the present day value of big rooms full of journalists. The whole thing. My bad. After all, Will Hearst, friend and then-boss, explained the internet to me back around 1992 when I became editor of the old SF Examiner. I then swiftly snagged Sun Microsystems braniac John Gage to demonstrate this emerging phenomenon to a roomful of Hearst newspaper colleagues. I think he...

Hearst to Slash, Sell or Close the Chronicle By SHIRA OVIDE Hearst Corp. said it may close its San Francisco Chronicle newspaper unless it can quickly slash costs at the money-losing daily. A vendor sells a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle at his newsstand in the San Francisco Municipal Railway station. Getty Images A vendor sells a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle at his newsstand in the San Francisco Municipal Railway station. A vendor sells a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle at his newsstand in the San Francisco Municipal Railway station. A vendor sells a copy of...

Union City -- Facing a pile of controversial campaign troubles - including incendiary comments by televangelist John Hagee that forced him to reject Hagee's endorsement - Sen. John McCain tried mightily to shift the focus to economic issues and his Democratic opponent Barack Obama on Thursday during a California campaign swing. McCain, speaking at a Silicon Valley forum on economic issues alongside Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, issued a renewed call for "comprehensive immigration reform" as a top agenda item for the next president. He called for a "temporary agricultural program," saying, "We need a way for an ordinary person to apply...

Beginning next week, the paper will institute three changes intended to reduce printing costs without compromising newsgathering resources or news space. On Sundays, the Insight and Books sections will be printed in tabloid size - the same dimensions as Sunday Datebook, also called the Pink. Books will be inserted into Insight as a pullout section so readers can read or save both sections separately. On Mondays and Tuesdays only, the Sports and Business sections will be combined, with Sports starting from the front and Business from the back. The Classified section will be attached to the back of Datebook on...

Politically weakened president gives no signs of altering course -- Events in Washington this week -- confirmation hearings beginning Tuesday for designated Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the release Wednesday of findings by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group -- bear all the markings of a turning point in the Iraq war. But like the war itself, now 3 1/2 years long, the shift is likely to prove a slow and agonizing slide toward an inevitable retreat, rather than the decisive pullout many voters thought they might get last month when they handed Democrats control of Capitol Hill. As politically weakened...

What he says isn't necessarily what he plans to do - Washington -- It would be reasonable to conclude after watching President Bush in the Middle East this week that the administration has no plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. "This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all,'' Bush said at a news conference Thursday morning in Jordan with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Yet some experts say it would be foolhardy to assume, just because Bush said it, that the statement is true. There is mounting evidence that the world of public...

A FEDERAL judge Thursday reaffirmed one of the Constitution's most cherished principles: No one, even the president of the United States, is above the law. In striking down the National Security Agency's warrantless-surveillance program, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor suggested it not only violated the rights of free speech and privacy -- it intruded on the separation of powers outlined in the Constitution. "The public interest is clear in this matter," she wrote in her 43-page opinion. "It is the upholding of the Constitution." Our government has the ability to pursue terrorists with all due aggressiveness without shredding the...

A federal judge expressed sympathy Friday for two Chronicle reporters facing subpoenas for their sources of grand jury testimony about steroids in sports, but he said legal precedent works against their request to keep those sources secret. "I think that you have a very compelling argument'' that courts should recognize a right of journalists to protect their sources, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White told the reporters' lawyer, Jonathan Donnellan, near the end of a hearing in San Francisco that lasted almost two hours. White observed that most states and an increasing number of foreign nations have adopted laws to protect...

A dispute between the Justice Department and The Chronicle over the use of grand jury testimony in stories about athletes' steroid use will come to a showdown today in a San Francisco federal courtroom. Federal prosecutors will ask a judge to order reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams to reveal who leaked star players' admissions that they had taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs. The reporters and the newspaper have also been served with subpoenas for grand jury transcripts and any documents that would reveal the source or sources. If the judge refuses to dismiss the subpoenas and orders the reporters to...

Washington -- The Bush administration's notion that toppling Saddam Hussein would stabilize a turbulent region is among the casualties of this week's Middle East carnage. The death toll in Lebanon and Israel, which exceeds 250 in the past week, is a grim reminder that the sectarian violence in Baghdad 500 miles to the east is but one of many hotspots in a region that has been plagued by violence for more than 1,000 years. The oft-stated hope that a new Iraqi government would swiftly transform the region's fractured politics has been realized with unintended consequences: an emboldened Iran; the victory...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Federal prosecutors asked a judge today to order two Chronicle reporters to identify their source of grand jury testimony about star athletes' use of performance-enhancing drugs, saying the journalists are the only available sources of the information and have no legal right to withhold it. "The criminal violations here strike at the very heart of the secrecy of grand jury proceedings and the integrity of the judicial system,'' lawyers from the U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles said in papers arguing for enforcement of subpoenas against the two reporters. They were referring to the illegal disclosure of...

Washington -- Americans have accepted many intrusions on their civil liberties in the name of security since Sept. 11, 2001, from opening bags at baseball games to shoeless searches at airports. And for the better part of five years, the politics of terror has served President Bush and the Republican Party well, contributing to his re-election and the party's majority in Congress. Those inclinations will now be tested by the disclosure that the National Security Agency has been collecting data on tens of millions of Americans' phone calls. Unlike previous revelations of domestic spying and detention programs, which were primarily...

Two San Francisco Chronicle reporters have been subpoenaed by the Justice Department to appear before a San Francisco grand jury and identify the sources who supplied them with grand jury testimony in the BALCO steroids investigation Their stories on the doping scandal, published in 2004, helped lead to congressional hearings on steroid use in baseball, major league baseball rewriting its drug testing policy and raised awareness across the country about the danger and abuse of steroids among young athletes, including those in college and high school.

Washington -- There is a new chief of staff and a new budget director, and soon a new press secretary at the White House. Yet so far there is no sign of a new direction. The changes in President Bush's inner circle over the past several weeks are the most dramatic of his presidency. They come at a time when his popularity is foundering, and even Republican loyalists are expressing alarm as they look toward the November election. Yet the shuffle -- which by most indications is not over -- may not by itself reverse Bush's slide. Most observers agree...

THE PRESIDENT of Iran is playing right into the hands of the hawks within the Bush administration who have designs on a military strike against the country. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began the week by trumpeting advancements in Iran's uranium-enrichment program. Then on Friday, for anyone who had any questions about Iran's fitness to be experimenting with nuclear materials that might be converted to weapons use in the future, Ahmadinejad gladly connected the dots. Last fall, he provoked outrage from responsible nations of the world by suggesting Israel should be "wiped off the map." On Friday, he was even more inflammatory....

THE Bush White House lost its credibility on the Iraq war before the first shot was fired. The rush to war was prompted by what proved to be false pretext: That Saddam Hussein's regime was armed with weapons of mass destruction. War fervor was further fueled by the administration's attempt to link, by implication, Hussein with al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks. Vice President Dick Cheney had openly scoffed at the suggestion that the U.S. engagement would be either long or arduous. Democracy would then quickly blossom in the Middle East, as Arab nations rushed to emulate the Iraq model,...

THE CARICATURES of Muhammad that have ignited an international furor are offensive and recklessly off base in portraying the prophet as a terrorist. The cartoons lacked artistic merit or satirical sophistication. We have to wonder: What were the Danish cartoonists and the newspapers that originally decided to publish them thinking? Still, the global reaction is far more disturbing than the editors' great lapse in taste and cultural sensitivity. The protests by Muslims demanding violent revenge against the cartoonists -- or, in some cases, against Denmark generally -- are an affront in their own right to a religion of peace. They...