Politics

Just a quick Turkish update — the leader of the Justice and Development Party, Recep Tyyip Erodgan, says he’s opposed to a US strike on Iraq unless approved by the UN (original). Thanks to Carneggy for the heads up.

The Justice and Development Party has won the Turkish elections, kicking out the ruling coalition in a landslide. This seems likely to be more a reflection of discontent with the Turkish economy and a corrupt government than it is a return to Islamic fundamentalism, although the Justice and Development Party was formed from the remains of an Islamic fundamentalist party. However, they ran on a pro-Western platform and have disavowed their Islamic roots. This isn’t the Taliban, and the victory does not represent a repudiation of Turkish assistance in the US war on Iraq. I expect some will claim it does, but this one isn’t Bush’s fault. It may not even be a crisis. ...

Apparently, this sex toy thing is quite the issue for Alabama. The state has [appealed the decision](http://web.archive.org/web/20060322122141/http://web.archive.org/web/20060322122141/http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20021031&Category=APN&ArtNo=210310737&Ref=AR (original) “Tuscaloosa”) (original) which permitted sex toys to be sold therein. You know, if sex toys were legal in Alabama, the legislators would have something to distract them from ineffectual prudishness.

So, was the Wellstone memorial too political? In my tradition, one of the things you do at wakes is vow to carry on the work of the deceased. It’s OK to be really emotional about that; emotion is part of what a wake is for. Emotion represents respect for the dead. It shows you cared about him, or about her. I would expect that, at a politician’s wake, his close friends would want to make strong statements; that they would exhort the attendees to “keep his legacy alive.” ...

One more quickie… people have observed that the University of Arizona campus was a weapons-free zone, and that this didn’t prevent the recent shootings. This is about as significant as pointing out that the UIowa student shootings (original) didn’t take place in a weapons-free zone. If you don’t know how many people decided not to go on a rampage due to the policies in either case, you don’t know anything. ...

I was going to get bitchy about some (original) reactions (original) to Paul Wellstone’s death, but James Lileks says it so much better.

The sniper seems to have been caught, which is great news. Not so great news: he recently changed his last name to Muhammad, and reportedly converted to Islam some years ago. Inevitably, some people are rushing to point out how dangerous those Muslims are. I thought about it. In the last ten years, if we look at domestic terrorism, the score is American Christians 2 and American Muslims 1. Kaczynski and McVeigh beat Muhammad. Clearly — very clearly — Christians are bad news and very dangerous. ...

The US is now floating a compromise resolution in the UN, which would not mandate military action if inspections fail. It would leave the door open for an invasion, but it wouldn’t explicitly link the two. This comes after strong criticism from most of the world in open UN debate. You’d expect Middle Eastern countries to be edgy about the whole thing, but even Australia recommended against linking military action to failed inspections. I should perhaps be more confident in the system. ...

Eugene Volokh has some interesting discussion about the limits of free speech. The Supreme Court commented this morning on the question of free speech as it applies to explanations of how to commit a crime. In short, they refused to hear an appeal of a decision in which a lower court essentially claimed such explanations were protected. However, the Supreme Court also explicitly stated that they were not agreeing with the lower court in that decision.

This is probably illegal, but here’s the transcript of the Supreme Court arguments in Eldred vs. Ashcroft (original). (I say illegal because I’m pretty sure Lexis/Nexis has some sort of copyright on the collection of transcripts. Consider it civil disobedience.)