News-Journal from Mansfield, Ohio • 8

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yf A-. -V' -'VAA Tf- sitive about blasphemy. She recalls giving a speech in England when a woman in the au-dience suggested that her father deserved what he got because he was so blunt about the topic. "I said, 4I don't care what he said, and I don't care how he said it. He didn't deserve to be shot and killed for Taseer said.

She's dismayed at the toll extremism is taking on Pakistan by spawning violence or an intolerant mindset. She's also disappointed at how few Pakistani leaders are willing to take a public stand against extremism or how many find some reason to excuse it. She bemoans how for decades moderate or liberal leaders in Pakistan have appeased the religious right for short-lived political gains whether it was by banning alcohol and nightclubs or passing laws that discriminate against certain religious 9ects. Unlike many Pakistani politicians, she's willing to criticize the role Saudi Arabia has played in funding numerous hardline Islamist schools in Pakistan. And she's quick to note that the United States as well as Pakistan said little about it after all, it needs Saudi Arabia's oil.

1 Pakistan has a tradition of dynastic politics. The most famous political family has been that of the Bhuttos, which spawned former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, also assassinated by Islamist extremists. Salmaan Taseer was a member of the Bhutto-led Pakistan People's Party, Shehrbano Taseer said she views Pakistan as an enticing challenge akin to a Rubik's Cube because of its many, convoluted problems. But she said she has no plans to run for office. "It's such a dirty profession," she said, laughing.

Sherry Rehman, a People's Party lawmaker who also has been threatened for speaking out against the blasphemy laws, said Shehrbano Taseer will "chart her own future." "She's found a torch to carry, and she will do it," Rehman said. "It's what her father would have wanted." Taseer is frustrated with the Pakistani justice system's delays in processing the case of Qadri, her father's confessed killer. Pakistan's courts have very low conviction rates, even in terrorism cases. Qadri's confession may not be enough to persuade a court to punish him, considering the threats facing any judge who dares pass such a judgment. Taseer wants the former bodyguard to spend his life in prison, in solitary confinement.

A death sentence is "too easy," and a conviction would send a warning to other would-be assassins, she said. "In Pakistan, we have very few brave and honest leaders," she said. "We need our heroes alive." By Nahal Toosi Associated Press KARACHI, Pakistan A day after her father was gunned down by an Islamist extremist, a grieving Shehrbano Taseer wrote on Twitter, "A light has gone out in our home today." It wasn't long before the 22-year-old realized something else: Her father's death had lit a fire in her. In the months since, the daughter of the late Punjab province Gov. Salmaan Taseer has emerged as one of Pakistan's most outspoken voices for tolerance.

Through her writing and speaking, she warns any audience who will listen of the threat of Islamist extremism, and impatiently waits for her father's killer to be brought to justice. And yes, sometimes she gets scared. She has received threats from militants, who've warned her to remember her father's fate. "These extremists, they want to tell you how to think, how to feel, how to act," said Taseer, a slim, elegant young woman with intense brown eyes. "It has made me more resolute that these people should never win." Salmaan Taseer was assassinated Jan.

4 at a market in Islamabad by one of his own bodyguards. The confessed killer, Mumtaz Qadri, boasted that he'd carried out the slaying because the outspoken politician a liberal in Pakistani terms wanted to change blasphemy laws that impose the death sentence for insulting Islam. To the horror of Taseer's supporters, many Pakistanis praised the assassin. Islamist lawyers showered Qadri with rose petals, and major Muslim groups, even ones considered relatively moderate, said Taseer deserved to die because, in their view, speaking out against the blasphemy laws was tantamount to blasphemy itself. Two months after Taseer's killing, gunmen killed Shahbaz Bhatti, the sole Christian minister in the government and another opponent of the blasphemy laws, which have often been used against Pakistan's Christian minority.

Bhatti's killers left a note promising to target others who pushed to change the laws. Shehrbano Taseer still has trouble remembering those first moments and days after her father's death her brother telling her their father was gone, the rush Of grief, the hundreds of people flooding her family's home in the eastern city of Lahore. Mostly, it's a blur. "I'd never lost anyone in my life, not a friend or anyone," she said. "For everyone else it was the governor and their leader and this man, and it was this big, sexy story and it was so sensationalist.

But for me, it was my father." Taseer majored in government and film at Smith College Shehrbano Taseer, daughter of Pakistan's assassinated governor, spc iks June 1 3 at the Social Media Summit in Karachi, Pakistan. A day after her father was gunned down by an Islamist extremist, a grieving Taseer wrote on Twitter, "A light has gone out in our home today." It wasn't long before the 22-year-old realized something else: her father's death had lit a fire in her. ap notes that criticize Pakistan's discriminatory laws, especially blasphemy claims that have reached the courts since her father's death. When she singles out a politically marginalized community, either on Twitter or her other outreach, Taseer recalls how well her father treated that group, how he was often the only public official to visit their homes after an attack or publicly speak on their behalf. Once, Salmaan Taseer took his daughter along on a visit to meet Mukhtar Mai, a Pakistani woman whose case attracted international attention because of allegations that she was gang-raped on the orders of a village coun cil.

The governor asked Mai to put her hand on his daughter's head, so that Shehrbano Taseer could gain the same courage to stand up for her rights. Like her father and Bhatti, the Christian leader, Taseer wants the blasphemy laws amended to prevent their misuse. The laws are vaguely written, and often used to persecute minorities or settle rivalries, rights activists say. The state has not executed anyone under the law, but the accused may spend years in custody. Some defendants have been killed by extremists after being freed by the courts.

But Taseer has found that many Muslims, even moderate, liberal ones, are extremely sen OPiniOTJ SHAPERS Some tidbits picked up on my way north of 49 in Northampton, Massachusetts, and is by profession a journalist. She spends much of her time now writing columns and traveling in and beyond Pakistan to speak about Islamist extremism. Salmaan Taseer, a father of seven, was not afraid to be blunt a trait that attracted both enmity and grudging respect. On Twitter, Salmaan Taseer openly taunted and trashed extremists, once tweeting that he'd never back down on the blasphemy issue, "even if I'm the last man standing." His daughter, who tweets under the handle shehrbano-taseer, is more gentle but just as firm. Her more than 9,000 followers on Twitter often receive about through an intensive forensic investigation of life.

1. Everything in moderation early on you (hopefully) learn the truth to this statement. If you try to ignore this truth, your body will lead you back. Just listen. 2.

Everything is defined by its opposites. Nothing exists without its opposite counterpoise. You absolutely cannot have something without its opposite. Don't tell anyone, but this gives a whole new meaning to the concepts of Heaven and Hell. 3.

Life is sexually transmitted by unprotected sex. 4. Don't take things too personally. Think how much better life would be if you could turn off your "give a darn" when you need to. Sort of like putting blinders on a horse.

The horse benefits from the actions of others who know better than it does. 5. Use technology to duplicate yourself (or at least increase your footprint). And yes, this includes Facebook. 6.

Ghosts do exist. The bad news is, they're all in our heads. 7. The older you get, the more massive your self-esteem be I think there's something wrong with my mail delivery. For some reason, I occasionally don't get some of my mail.

For instance, I never did get my invitations to speak at the various high school and college commencement ceremonies. Weird, huh? I got other pieces of mail, like various nickels and dimes and notepads, and other trinkets from my great philanthropic efforts (just ask my wife). But no speech invitations. But, so as not to waste my pre comes. What this means is that you are less easily moved by what others think of you.

This is probably a good thing. The jury's still out on that. 8. The things you own end up owning you. That doesn't stop me.

I'm just observing here. 9. The easiest place to get sick is in a hospital. 10. Never let your doctor tell you what the side effects of a new medication are.

11. Everything will be OK in the end. If it's not OK, it's not the end. 12. People who predict the end of the world all have one thing in common what they tell people the following day: No.

We don't get out of this that easy. 13. At stage volumes, it's better to get your distortion in the amplifier than from a pedal. The exact opposite is true at low volumes. 14.

All emotional pain lasts for 12 minutes. Anything longer than that is self-inflicted. 15. You might wonder why they keep printing money. Why pay taxes if they can just print more money? 16.

Be yourself. Everyone else is taken. 17. Do not regret growing older. It's a privilege denied to many.

18. Wait 24 hours and re-read any angry email replies before sending them. 19. Natural selection is a beautiful thing. 20.

In the future, everyone will be anonymous for IS minutes. 21. Be careful with tattoos. They won't look as intended when you're 84. 22.

Having few other role models, dogs frequently take on the personality of their owners. 23. Apparently, the older you get, the more efficient your digestive system becomes. This probably was an incentive 30,000 years ago to keep the old people around. They were less resource intensive.

24. They dp not sell Agent Orange for your flower beds. 25. Don't Google yourself too much. It's akin to looking in the mirror too frequently.

26. It's always preferable to have truth on your side. 27. Doing or saying nothing is sometimes the correct response. 28.

Blondes make the world go 'round. Really. 29. Ray Charles' "What'dl Say" is possibly the greatest song ever written by man. 30.

There is other intelligent life in the universe. But they're nowhere near us. This is probably a good thing. 31. No one here gets out alive.

32. The real question is not "What is the meaning of life?" The real question is "Who is it that wants to know?" 33. Gasoline is always cheaper the day after you fill up. 34. There really are black helicopters.

35. Sometimes it's better to feign ignorance. 36. Reality is frequently more bizarre than anything you could possibly make up. 37.

If you've done something stupid, act like you actually know what you're doing. 38. Your sense of humor is one of the last things you lose. You're welcome I Bob Collard is a salesman for Mansfield Electric Supply. Email him atbobc.serversmail.com.

Bob Collard News Journal columnist pared speech for these occasions, here it is. I read somewhere that numbered lists are good to hold an audience's attention, and to that end, here's mine. These are various observations, in no particular order, that one can make when on, oh, let's just say somewhere on the north side of 49. Some of these have been said before, but they bear repeating here. These come.