I borrowed that headline. To the person from whom I borrowed it: I would give you credit, but I know you cherish your privacy.

In any event, in my dream world, this is what all journalism from Turkey would be like, and indeed what all foreign correspondence would be like. I don’t always agree with Alexander Christie-Miller, and don’t necessarily even agree with everything he’s written here, but he’s writing about a real Turkey, not a caricature; he’s careful to say what he does and doesn’t know; there are no cliches here, and he’s asking a hugely important question about the social effects of mass housing projects:

Last week, a Maricopa County Superior Court Judge upheld Arizona’s Empowerment Account Program as constitutional under the Arizona State Constitution.  The program allows parents of special needs children to apply for state funds that the parents can use for a wide variety of educational expenses, including tutoring and private school tuition, required textbooks and savings for college expenses. That’s obviously a dangerous program (if you let parents decide how to spend their tax dollars, where does it all end?) so the Arizona teachers union did its civic duty and sued to block the law.

Round I, at least, goes to the forces of school choice. Judge Maria del Mar Verdin ruled that, unlike other voucher programs that have been struck down in Arizona, “The monies are earmarked for a student’s educational needs as a parent may deem fit—not endorsed directly to a private institution in an all or nothing fashion.”  This is a critical point, unfortunately, because of the bogus constitutional argument that school voucher programs violate the First Amendment because taxpayer dollars will end up going to some religious schools.  When SCOTUS upheld an Ohio voucher program in 2002, then-Justice John Paul Stevens wailed that democracy is threatened “[w]henever we remove a brick from the wall that was designed to separate religion and government.”