Don't know what to do with that formerly-trendy FREE WINONA t-shirt? Just cross out her name and write in "LANCE WILLIAMS AND MARK FAINARU-WADA" in sparkle-pen instead -- the Chronicle's getting ready to send those guys to jail on principle, as the Hearst Publishing legal team files a motion to quash (i.e., ignore) the subpoenas that the US Attorney's office sent out to them to find out just where they got all their juicy secret grand jury information from.

So this is all a spin-off from the original steroids grand jury investigation -- you may remember how exciting it was to open up the Chron every day during that and read Williams and Fainaru-Wada's reporting of the purportedly-secret grand jury proceedings, like when Jason Giambi admitted he'd been using, and Barry Bonds went with the "I didn't know what was in that cream" argument. So the local US Attorney's office is hoppin' mad that the grand jury's secrecy was breached, and has started a secondary investigation to figure out who leaked.

As a part of that, the US Attorney's office has now subpoenaed Williams and Fainaru-Wada to reveal their sources. If Williams and Fainaru-Wada are ordered to do so and refuse, they'll be sent to jail for contempt of court. Just like Judy Miller, only it's about weapons of mass bulk-up-tion, not destruction!

This should be interesting -- California, as we've seen recently, has a state law that protects reporters' sources. But this is in federal court, not state, and federal law arguably doesn't protect reporters. We're kind of intrigued to see what happens next.

Court papers here (.pdf). Phil Bronstein blogs about it here.