{"id":142,"date":"2009-03-11T20:17:04","date_gmt":"2009-03-11T20:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/03\/vouchers-go-down-irony-barely.html"},"modified":"2009-03-11T20:17:04","modified_gmt":"2009-03-11T20:17:04","slug":"vouchers-go-down-irony-barely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/03\/vouchers-go-down-irony-barely.html","title":{"rendered":"Vouchers Go Down; Irony Barely Survives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just yesterday, the Senate trounced the effort to create a kind of &#8220;voucher scheme forever&#8221; for the District of Columbia.&nbsp; The vote was 58 opposed and 39 in favor.&nbsp; The issue will not ever go away, of course, because the facts apparently don&#8217;t matter to a significant minority of people.<\/p>\n<p>As I pointed out in my earlier post, voucher plans do not work.&nbsp; Some of the parents in the DC program actually don&#8217;t like the program, many parents eligible for it don&#8217;t even apply, and in general the students themselves have mixed reactions (but don&#8217;t feel particularly safer in their new schools than they did in their old ones.)&nbsp; But, I digress with the facts.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nThe irony of my previous argument was lost on you and some of our<br \/>\nposters.&nbsp; I don&#8217;t really think Senator Jon Ensign or Senator Jim DeMint<br \/>\n(two vocal advocates of vouchers) are &#8220;socialists&#8221;.&nbsp; I was just<br \/>\npointing out the hypocritical interest these two and others have in<br \/>\n&#8220;equalizing&#8221; opportunity only in regard to school vouchers.&nbsp; They<br \/>\naren&#8217;t leading any fight to &#8220;equalize&#8221; health care for all children;<br \/>\nthey aren&#8217;t spearheading the effort to make sure that women are paid<br \/>\nthe same as men for the same work.&nbsp; They have an ideological point to<br \/>\nmake about public schools.&nbsp; They don&#8217;t like them.&nbsp; Therefore, they want<br \/>\nto replace them with a repeatedly failed alternative that just happens<br \/>\n(I&#8217;m getting breathless here) to have a direct financial benefit to the<br \/>\nmainly religious private schools that get the funding.&nbsp; DC is the petri<br \/>\ndish for lousy ideas these and other Senators would like to promote all<br \/>\nover the country if they had the chance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just yesterday, the Senate trounced the effort to create a kind of &#8220;voucher scheme forever&#8221; for the District of Columbia.&nbsp; The vote was 58 opposed and 39 in favor.&nbsp; The issue will not ever go away, of course, because the facts apparently don&#8217;t matter to a significant minority of people. As I pointed out in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,8,11],"tags":[86,90,51,67,390,87,88,89],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-schools","category-congress","category-public-schools","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-irony","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-school-vouchers","tag-sen-jim-demint","tag-sen-jon-ensign","tag-socialism"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Vouchers Go Down; Irony Barely Survives - Lynn v. Sekulow<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/03\/vouchers-go-down-irony-barely.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vouchers Go Down; Irony Barely Survives - Lynn v. Sekulow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Just yesterday, the Senate trounced the effort to create a kind of &#8220;voucher scheme forever&#8221; for the District of Columbia.&nbsp; The vote was 58 opposed and 39 in favor.&nbsp; The issue will not ever go away, of course, because the facts apparently don&#8217;t matter to a significant minority of people. As I pointed out in&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/03\/vouchers-go-down-irony-barely.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lynn v. Sekulow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-03-11T20:17:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rev. Barry W. Lynn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Vouchers Go Down; Irony Barely Survives - Lynn v. Sekulow","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/03\/vouchers-go-down-irony-barely.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Vouchers Go Down; Irony Barely Survives - Lynn v. Sekulow","og_description":"Just yesterday, the Senate trounced the effort to create a kind of &#8220;voucher scheme forever&#8221; for the District of Columbia.&nbsp; The vote was 58 opposed and 39 in favor.&nbsp; The issue will not ever go away, of course, because the facts apparently don&#8217;t matter to a significant minority of people. As I pointed out in&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/03\/vouchers-go-down-irony-barely.html","og_site_name":"Lynn v. Sekulow","article_published_time":"2009-03-11T20:17:04+00:00","author":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/03\/vouchers-go-down-irony-barely.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/03\/vouchers-go-down-irony-barely.html","name":"Vouchers Go Down; Irony Barely Survives - Lynn v. 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Sekulow","description":"A debate blog about church, state, faith and politics with Jay Sekulow and Barry W. Lynn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#\/schema\/person\/98ebaf547801cce8ce6fff4c27f51fc8","name":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","caption":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn"},"description":"Since 1992, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn has served as executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to the preservation of the Constitution's religious liberty provisions (www.au.org). In addition to his work as a long-time activist and lawyer in the civil liberties field, Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, offering him a unique perspective on church-state issues. An accomplished speaker and lecturer, Lynn has appeared frequently on television and radio broadcasts to offer analysis of First Amendment issues. News programs on which Lynn has appeared include PBS's \"NewsHour,\" NBC's \"Today Show,\" Fox News Channel's \"O'Reilly Factor,\" ABC's \"Nightline,\" CNN's \"Crossfire,\" CBS's \"60 Minutes,\" MSNBC's \"Countdown with Keith Olbermann,\" Fox News Channel's \"Hannity & Colmes,\" ABC's \"Good Morning America,\" CNN's \"Larry King Live\" and the national nightly news on NBC, ABC and CBS. On the radio, Lynn serves as host of \"Culture Shocks,\" a daily look at various issues affecting society and the culture. In the 1990s he served for two years as regular co-host of \"Pat Buchanan and Company\" and after that did a weekly syndicated radio program, \"Review of the News,\" with Col. Oliver North. Lynn is a regular guest on nationally broadcast radio programs, including National Public Radio's \"All Things Considered,\" \"Morning Edition\" and \"Talk of the Nation,\" as well as having appeared on national networks such as CBS Radio, CNN Radio, ABC Radio and AP Radio. Lynn began his professional career working at the national office of the United Church of Christ, including a two-year stint as legislative counsel for the Church's Office of Church in Society in Washington, D.C. From 1984 to 1991 he was legislative counsel for the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2006, Lynn authored Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault On Religious Freedom (Harmony Books). In 2008 he coauthored (with C. Welton Gaddy) First Freedom First: A Citizen's Guide to Protecting Religious Liberty and the Separation of Church and State (Beacon Press). Lynn writes frequently on religious liberty issues, and has had essays published in outlets such as USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Nation. Lynn also has op-eds published frequently by the McClatchy and Scripps-Howard newspaper chains. A member of the Washington, D.C. and U.S. Supreme Court bar, Lynn earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1978. In addition, he received his theology degree from Boston University School of Theology in 1973. Lynn, who was born in Harrisburg, Pa., and raised in Bethlehem, Pa., lives in Chevy Chase, Md., with his family.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/author\/blynn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}