challenge

The Challenge
$14.96
Teen superstars Mary-Kate and Ashley take sibling rivalry to a whole new level in their latest The Challenge, playing estranged sisters who are total opposites.

Ambitious, uptight Lizzie(Ashley Olsen) and laid-back tree-hugger Shane(Mary-Kate Olsen) have to learn to live - and work - together as a team on a popular TV reality adventure show. A college scholarship is the prize at stake. Will the show's producers use sibling rivalry as a ratings tactic? Will this bring the girls closer or push them apart forever?

Shot in a scenic Mexican resort in Cabo San Lucas, this light-hearted comedy/adventure is the final entry in Mary-Kate and Ashley's successful series of video and DVD movies, before they continue their big-screen careers in 2004.

The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power
$26.00
As one who has followed the Supreme Court detainee cases concerning Hamdi, Rasul, Hamdan, and Boumediene, I was pleased to obtain this book, which contains background on the Hamdan case. The Hamdan case centered around the legality of military commissions as conceived and set up by the Bush Administration (Cheney and Addington). At bottom, the issue is one of Presidential power and how far the President can go unilaterally during times of war without the intervention of the Legislative and Judicial branches. I found that in addition to providing some generalized legal background, this book lends a human perspective on what was going on as a result of the government's legal response to 9/11.

Salim Hamdan grew up in a poor, backward farming region of Yemen, received something like a fourth grade education, and was orphaned by the time he was eleven. Adrift at a young age in a place that celebrated religious martyrdom, he fell under the spell of a radical jihadist and eventually made his way during the 90s to Afghanistan where he became employed as Osama bin Laden's driver and bodyguard. After 9/11 he was captured by the Northern Alliance and turned over to the U.S. for a ransom. After the order was signed by Bush to set up the military commissions, Hamdan was one of the first to be charged.

The main part of the story concerns the heroic efforts of especially two lawyers, law professor Neal Katyal and Charles Swift of the JAG corps, in taking up Hamdan's case and eventually presenting it before the Supreme Court. Katyal became the driving force. He had been a hawk concerning running down al Qaeda and had supported the Patriot Act, but had serious qualms about giving the President a blank check in setting up military commissions. It was a heroic effort especially in light of what they were going up against: an executive branch that was determined to use a state-of-war emergency to justify its powers. "We're going to crush you", one of the government lawyers said when Katyal faced the Court of Appeals. An interesting note is that Chief Justice John Roberts was on the three judge panel for that case, and apparently was being considered by Bush as a Supreme Court nominee during that very period. It was a disturbing conflict of interest that Katyal perceived, but about which he could do nothing.

In the end, Hamdan - at least the Hamdan before his extended detention - was simply not a dangerous individual. Finally, after all the time spent detained, much of it in solitary confinement, a military court found him not guilty of conspiracy in 2008. There was simply no evidence, nor did he give indications during interviews, that he was a dangerous conspirator. Concerning the interviews, it is interesting to note that the useful and valuable information he provided about al Qaeda was not extracted as a result of mistreatment he received particularly at the Bagram prison, but as a result of attempts by an FBI agent Ali Soufan to build a relationship with him.

Legal precedent and ambiguous applications of the law present great complexity here that can make the arguments on where to draw the line on Presidential power difficult for a layman to follow. But the original purpose is clear: bring the detainees at Guantanamo to justice. As we can see from the results, by going to an extreme and insisting that Hamdan did not have rights under the Geneva Conventions and that the President was free to depart however much he wanted from the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) in setting up the legal apparatus of the military commissions, that entire purpose of bringing the detainees to justice was undermined. It is as if the executive was simply thinking in terms of expediency and didn't care about justice. In any event, the upshot was that they caused all manner of attention about possible injustices to be focused on the very people they were trying to prosecute.

Active Life: Extreme Challenge Bundle with Mat
$59.99
Excellent game. Requires lots of movements and coordination. Very good alternative compared to other Wii games out there. Requires more than just hand movements. Most other reviews here covered all the bases. Have to agree that the first one "Outdoor Challenge" was a bit better.

Challenge (2005)
$14.99
this is awesome german martial art movie.the stick fighting was the best good script and good actorsand a ho lot of action and just a little bit humor i would watch this movie over and over it that good