There may still be snow on the ground, but here's news to bring a warm glow to the hearts of liberals everywhere: George Clooney and Aaron "The West Wing" Sorkin are teaming up on The Challenge, a look at the trial (or rather not) of Osama Bin Laden's driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan.
The film's not concerned with Hamdan's guilt or innocence but rather the fight by Navy lawyer Charles Swift and Georgetown University law professor Neal Katyal to challenge the legitimacy of the military tribunals set up under the Bush administration to try Guantanamo detainees like Hamdan. The two legal eagles took the fight to the US Supreme Court which ruled (spoiler!) that it had the right to oversee the tribunals lest they be in violation of the US Constitution, US Uniform Code of Military Justice and Geneva Convention, tiny details that Rummy and Bush had kinda overlooked.
Sorkin, who already proved he can write a nailbiting Guantanamo legal thriller with A Few Good Men, will be writing the script based on Jonathan Mahler's book 'The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight Over Presidential Power'. Clooney is producing through his Smoke House Pictures, hoping to play Swift and may direct as well.
Frankly, this sounds like a winner to us. You've got Bush-baiting, which is everyone's favourite sport; legal shenanigans for all those billions of people addicted to Law & Order; right-on flag-waving for Obama voters; and George Clooney in Navy uniform for at least half the population to go nuts over. Just one question remains: do we need to draft in Jack Nicholson in to play Donald Rumsfeld?