This week’s rally in support of the D.C. voucher program garnered a good bit of attention and perhaps even helped push President Obama into tepid support for keeping current students funded, killing the program slowly and quietly over a longer period.

Of course, as I and others have noted, that’s not the point. Here’s a roundup of what is at issue:

At the Economist’s blog yesterday, they get it spot on:

Actually, that’s not much of a compromise. That’s more of a cover-up. Let’s remember that Mr Obama, who sends his own children to private school, made the following promise during his inaugural address [to support what works] … Here’s a programme that every indication shows is working. So why aren’t we moving forward? “It’s a cop-out,” says Joseph Robert, a supporter of the progamme. Quite right.

And Mike Petrilli notes how meaningless Obama’s nominal and seriously compromised support really is:

While it’s welcome news that President Obama will request funding to keep the D.C. voucher program’s scholarship recipients in private schools through high-school graduation, it will amount to nothing more than a cheap p.r. stunt unless he also promises to veto any appropriations bill that kills the program outright. Congress is unlikely to follow his wishes unless the president makes it clear that this is a priority for him. But really, what are the chances of that?

Hot Air’s Allahpundit puts the fight over this program in its proper and insulting context:

You’re a real sport, champ. Trillion-dollar federal budget deficits as far as the eye can see and somehow [Obama] and the Democrats can’t scrape together a few million to keep this going. Unbelievable.

“Unbelievable” is one word for it. I can think of some others…

Dan Lips gives a good run-down of the rally and what’s at stake:

To paraphrase Virginia Walden Ford of D.C. Parents for School Choice at today’s rally, we shouldn’t be satisfied until all families — regardless of background — can choose a quality school for their children.

Mary Katherine Ham weighs in as well, with pictures of the rally and of the children that congressional Democrats and Obama have decided don’t matter.

Finally, our own David Boaz notes that many of the D.C. Scholarship kids will have to return to chronically violent and dangerous public schools, and that unsafe public schools are a problem around the metro area; kids in D.C. and around the country would benefit greatly from school choice simply in terms of physical safety.