Dara Shikoh, Maureen Dowd, Friedman, NYC trial

Zahoor

Yoginder Sikand - Dara Shikoh, eldest son of the Mughal Emperor of India, Shah Jahan, and heir apparent to his throne, was born near Ajmer in 1615 C.E. It is said that before Dara’s birth, Shah Jahan had paid a visit to the tomb of the great Chishti Sufi mystic, Hazrat Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer and there had prayed for a son to be born to him, since all his earlier children had been daughters. Thus, when Dara was born great festivities were held in Delhi, the imperial capital, for the Emperor now had an heir to succeed him to the throne. The Emperor Shah Jahan’s serious illness in l657 C.E. was the signal of a war of succession among his sons. Aurangzeb grabbed the throne in 1658, and had his father imprisoned in the fort at Agra, where he died eight years later. He then ordered the execution of Dara, who, as Shah Jahan’s eldest son, was considered to be the rightful heir to the throne. Although the conflict between the two may actually have been, at root, political, it was sought to be given a religious garb. Dara was accused by Aurangzeb and some ‘ulama attached to the royal court of infidelity and heresy. Accordingly, he was executed under a royal decree issued by Aurangzeb in 1659 C.E.. He lies buried, a forgotten hero, in a nondescript grave in the tomb complex of the Emperor Humayun in Delhi. [thank AK]

Maureen Dowd - Dither, dither, speech. Foreign trip, bow, reassure. Seminar, summit. Shoot a jump shot with the guys, throw out the first pitch in mom jeans. Compromise, concede, close the deal. Dither, dither, water down, news conference.....t’s time for the president to reinvent this formula and convey a more three-dimensional person....Palin can be stupefyingly simplistic, but she seems dynamic. Obama is impressively complex but he seems static...She nurtures her grass roots while he neglects his....He struggles to transcend identity politics while she wallows in them. As he builds an emotional moat around himself, she exuberantly pushes whatever she has, warts and all — the good looks, the tabloid-perfect family, the Alaska quirkiness, the kids with the weird names.

Thomas Friedman - These six factors {read the link) are pushing our system, which was designed to have divided powers and to force compromises, into the realm of paralysis. To get anything big done now, we have to generate so many compromises — couched in 1,000-plus-page bills — with so many different interest groups that the solutions are totally suboptimal. We just get the sum of all interest groups.

The Real Price of Trying KSM - All of these motions and three dozen more will be either denied or denuded of any significant impact on the disposition of the case. The speedy-trial argument will fail. Important documents will be scrubbed and redacted to the point of unintelligibility or will be ruled irrelevant. The motions to dismiss will all be denied. And though some of KSM's statements will be suppressed in order to preserve the appearance of impartiality and integrity, plenty of the most damming ones will remain admissible. While condemning in stern language the terrible treatment of KSM and denouncing water-boarding as beneath the high standards of our justice system, the trial judge will nonetheless admit into evidence statements made by KSM in subsequent military tribunals, along with those made to a so-called "clean team" of interrogators, rendering all the suppressed evidence utterly insignificant.