The heyday for journalists seems to be history. Only months ago, the military periodically flew dozens of print reporters, TV crews, pool photographers and sketch artists to Guantanamo Bay from Andrews Air Force Base near Washington.

Once they landed in the arid heat, they were met by soldiers who shepherded them in buses and a boat across the bay to a press room to watch court proceedings on a big-screen TV. Military public affairs officers stood by to answer questions.

At night, the journalists were ferried back across the bay to their Combined Bachelor Quarters, where they shared drinks and conversation before falling into bed.

These days, the military press liaisons outnumber the journalists. Only reporters from AP, Reuters and The Miami Herald were present for this week's trial.

The reporters don't stay across the bay during the hearings anymore. Now, they sleep in tents erected on a cracked, abandoned airstrip near the two courthouses.

The Pentagon has declined to provide a list of the detainees now being held or even to specify how many there are beyond offering a figure of “about 255.” But by reviewing thousands of pages of government documents released in recent years, as well as court records and news reports from around the world, The New York Times was able to compile its own list and construct a picture of the population still held at Guantánamo Bay.

Much of the analysis is based on records of Guantánamo hearings for individual detainees, which have been made public since 2006 as a result of a lawsuit by The Associated Press. The Times has posted those documents on its Web site arranged by detainee name.

Most Court commentators believe conservatives are finally riding high in the saddle at the Supreme Court—and enjoying it. Increasingly, their ascendancy is being viewed, as author Jeffrey Toobin puts it, as President George W. Bush’s "most enduring triumph." In The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse, now retired from the beat, wrote that it is "the Supreme Court that conservatives had long yearned for and that liberals feared." NPR’s Nina Totenberg chimed in that conservatives " seem to have reached the promised land." Without being churlish, it is fair to wonder whether even this part of the Bush legacy is the shining success it is cracked up to be.

Most of the proceedings will be closed to the public because lawyers will be discussing classified material.

In the case that began Thursday, government lawyers appear to be taking few chances that the men will be freed.They have filed a sealed envelope of evidence with Judge Leon, which the detainees' lawyers have not been permitted to see. In court filings the government lawyers said that if the evidence in the closed hearings was not enough to justify the detention, then the judge should open the envelope.Judge Leon, the filing said, “may very well ultimately face the circumstance where the information justifying detention is too sensitive” to share not only with the detainees but also with their lawyers.

"They've put a basically Judeo-Christian religious text in the park, which we think is great, because people should be exposed to it," [Summum leader Ron] Temu said. "But our principles should be exposed as well. "Su Menu, the church's president, agreed. "If you look at them side by side," Ms. Menu said of the two monuments, "they really are saying similar things." The Third Commandment: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." The Third Aphorism: "Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates." Michael W. Daniels, the mayor here, is not the vibrating sort.

[Church lawyer Brian] Barnard has represented the Summum church for many years. "They're odd," he said of his clients, with an affectionate smile. "They're strange. They're different." Bernie Aua, the church's vice president, said the court case should not turn on how his religion was viewed. "We have this thing called the Constitution," Mr. Aua said. "The fact is, it's a public park. And public parks are public."

“The law says that if you don’t assert and protect the right to an image, you can lose that right.”

King's writings, likeness and voice are considered intellectual property, and almost any use — from graduate thesis papers to TV documentaries — are subject to approval by his estate, now administered by his surviving children, Martin Luther King III, Dexter King and the Rev. Bernice King. (Because Obama is an elected official, his words and image are in the public domain and can be used without permission.)

He points to his overall record, which is similar to his predecessor's. According to court data, 61% of capital-murder cases his office has handled so far have resulted in convictions; the previous district attorney, Bill Hill, got convictions in 55% of capital-murder cases during a comparable period of time. Mr. Watkins has convicted 48% of murder cases and 34% of sexual-assault cases involving an adult, compared to 48% and 31%, respectively, for Mr. Hill.

In normal political campaigns, election day -- win or lose -- signals the end.

Not so with Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment defining marriage as only between a man and a woman that was approved by 52% of California voters Nov. 4.

Instead of settling the question of gay marriage in California, the election merely ushered in a new, and in many cases more heated, phase of the campaign, with both sides looking ahead to 2010, when the matter could be back on the ballot.

If justices uphold the proposition, gay marriage backers plan to put their own measure before voters perhaps as soon as 2010 to re-amend the state Constitution to allow the marriages.

If the justices toss out Proposition 8, some gay-marriage opponents have talked of putting something on the ballot themselves, either to again ban gay marriage or to oust Supreme Court justices or both.

Many on the No on 8 side are also trying to figure out what went wrong with their campaign. Their side was leading in polls in the weeks before the election and has since been accused of not doing enough outreach to blacks and Latinos and not responding quickly or effectively enough to the other side's claims about what effect the proposition would have on public school curriculums.

The column means to be about ideas rather than news in the sense of accounts of recent factual developments.  But I hope those ideas are timely, fresh and rooted in the work and culture of the Court, the issues that are likely to reach it and the consequences of its decisions.  I'm interested, too, in the empirical, analytical and theoretical work of the legal academy, but I may be alone in this.

“There’s something a little bit offensive to me—as all these media organizations are cutting back so significantly on personnel—that people are out there saying, ‘Well, Dan Abrams shouldn’t be trying to help them find any work,’” said Mr. Abrams. “You know, give them a break.”

The law is clear: John Giuca, based on the evidence secretly gathered by his mother—along with other discrepancies in witness testimony—may very well be entitled to a new trial. Even if Allo didn’t understand the questions during voir dire of a connection to Giuca, under his oath as a juror he was obliged, once their intersecting circles became apparent, to inform the court of this conflict.

On the surface, the list of the 14 people pardoned by the president this week shows few common denominators in terms of time served, geographic location or even type of crime, except that the felonies were non-violent. But a closer look at some of the newly pardoned shows many of them are church-going, blue-collar workers from rural areas (and ardent Bush supporters) who had little trouble finding jobs after their convictions. There is another common thread: the important role firearms once played in their lives.