Hundreds of detainees are awaiting hearings in a Washington federal court in the coming months to determine whether they were properly labeled enemy combatants and imprisoned without being charged.

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon, who has said he wants to resolve the 24 cases assigned to him before the next president is sworn in, urged President Bush's administration to find a way for at least part of those cases to be held in public.

"If it can't be done, I have great concern that these hearings will be virtually or exclusively classified, closed to the public and, I might add, to the detainees," Leon said.

Leon said he would try to run a secure phone line from the military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to his courtroom so the detainees can listen to the hearing. Because prisoners are prohibited from hearing classified information, however, that effort would be useless if the entire hearing were classified.

Tharin Gartrell is due in Arapaho County Court on Thursday.

Authorities say police found scoped rifles, wigs, fake IDs and a bulletproof vest in the 28-year-old's rented truck after he was pulled over in the Denver area last weekend, ahead of the Democratic National Convention there. The resulting investigation led to the arrest of Gartrell and two other men who authorities say talked about killing Obama.

The U.S. Attorney's Office later said Gartrell and the other men were drug users making racists threats and had no firm assassination plot, and no capacity to carry out any attack.

Parish, an economist who once taught at Charleston Southern, filed a financial affidavit last week seeking help in appealing his federal 24-year prison sentence.

An order filed Tuesday with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., assigns the Parish criminal appeal to the public defender.

Parish pleaded guilty last year to two criminal counts of fraud and one count of lying to investigators. Sentenced June 26 and now serving time in a federal prison in North Carolina, Parish has filed a notice of appeal with the 4th Circuit.

While he was also ordered to repay $66 million that investors lost, a judgment in a companion civil suit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission and filed in federal court last week indicates only a portion of the money went for his personal use.

Parish personally benefited from only $7.7 million, said Alex Rue, the senior trial counsel for the Securities and Exchange Commission office in Atlanta.

The court order requires him to repay that money, along with prejudgment interest, for a total of $8.3 million.

The judgment is in addition to the $66 million Parish was ordered to repay in the criminal case, said David Dantzler, the attorney helping tally Parish's assets. He said that, when everything is counted, investors will likely only recover a dime on the dollar.

Attorney Andy Savage, who represented Parish during the district court proceedings, said the $7.7 million is important.

The ballot question essentially will ask voters to prohibit the practice of same-sex marriage, which was approved this year by the California Supreme Court.

The discrepancy between voters' general attitudes against gay marriage and their position on banning it could be explained by a hesitancy to remove a constitutional right, said Mark Baldassare, president and chief executive of the Public Policy Institute of California, which conducted the poll.

A majority of likely voters, 54 percent, oppose ending gay marriage, compared with 40 percent who support it, the poll said. The result is similar to the findings of a Field Poll in July, which found that 51 percent of likely California voters opposed ending gay marriage, while 42 percent said they supported it.

But when it comes to general attitudes about gay marriage, voters in the Public Policy Institute poll are evenly split, at 47 percent for and against — as they have been for the past three years.

Justice Department lawyers said Wednesday that they will soon ask a federal appeals court not to force the president's top advisers to comply with congressional subpoenas next month. President Bush argues Congress doesn't have the authority to demand information from his aides.

U.S. District Judge John Bates strongly rejected that stance last month, ordering former White House counsel Harriet Miers to testify and White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten to turn over documents related to the firing of federal prosecutors.

It was a historic loss for the Bush administration, a stinging ruling in the first such case ever to make it to the courts.

The House Judiciary Committee responded swiftly, demanding Miers appear Sept. 11 as it investigates whether federal prosecutors were inappropriately fired as part of a White House effort to politicize the Justice Department.

The Bush administration had already indicated it would appeal but Justice Department lawyers said Wednesday that they will ask the court to step in quickly and temporarily put Miers' appearance on hold while the appeal plays out. It's a risky move for an administration that has spent years trying to strengthen the power of the presidency.

If the appeals court refuses to temporarily block the testimony, it would essentially be endorsing Bates' ruling against the Bush administration. Miers likely would have to comply with the subpoena, setting a precedent that would give Congress new teeth in its investigations and weaken future presidents.

On the other hand, if the appeals court temporarily blocks Miers' testimony, it could allow the Bush administration to run out the clock before a new Congress comes to Washington and the case becomes moot. In that situation, Bates' order will have been weakened and future presidents will have more wiggle room.

The Bush administration could have taken other steps to avoid a showdown at the appeals court. Even if it appealed Bates' ruling, it could have negotiated a deal with Congress in which Miers and Bolten provided some information voluntarily and lawmakers agreed to withdraw the lawsuit.

Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan LLP announced Wednesday that the firm has opened an office in New York City, its ninth location.

The move is aimed at strengthening the firm's existing real estate, employment, and corporate and transactional groups and attracting new corporate and municipal clients based in the New York metropolitan area.

"Nearly everyone would agree that New York is both the legal and business epicenter of the United States," Emery Harlan, partner of the Milwaukee-based firm, said in a prepared statement announcing the move. “As our firm continues to grow aggressively, expanding into New York was the logical next step.”

Key current clients in the area include Accenture, Limited Brands and Summit Business Media.

Philip Berg and Angela Dorn, formerly of Berg & Dorn Law Partners, in Manhattan, will join Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan as managing partners for the New York office.

Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan, one of the nation’s largest minority-owned law firms, has more than 75 attorneys in offices located in Milwaukee, Chicago, Indianapolis, Des Moines, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Las Vegas, New York and Washington D.C.

The demonstrators, from the right-wing People's Alliance for Democracy, stopped once they entered the compound at Government House at about 2:30 p.m. and did not attempt to enter the official offices there, footage on Thai TV channel 9 showed.

Earlier, mobs of alliance protesters took over a state-controlled television station and besieged several ministries in a self-described "final showdown" to try to bring down the elected government of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej.

It was the first time in recent years that a large crowd managed to get onto the Government House grounds. The crowd of several thousand appeared peaceful.

Samak was expected to speak about the situation late Tuesday afternoon.

The protests were the latest effort by the alliance to force Samak's government from office. The group contends Samak is a proxy for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup and now has gone into self-imposed exile in England.