In 2015, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) banned “issues-oriented” advertising of a political or religious nature from its buses, trains, and stations. Following this policy, the WMATA recently rejected a Christmas-themed advertisement submitted by the Catholic archdiocese, which has responded by challenging the policy in court. Sohrab Ahmari comments:

The ad, which was to be displayed on the side of WMATA buses, depicted the three shepherds against a starry night and urged commuters to “find the perfect gift” for the season—i.e., faith and service to the poor. According to the complaint, the transit authority rejected the ad soon after it was submitted, and subsequently refused to meet representatives of the archdiocese hoping to make their case.

The WMATA claims that its policy is non-discriminatory and therefore constitutional. All forms of political and religious expression are restricted in theory. But the archdiocese makes a strong case that the policy has been applied in “arbitrary and unreasonable” fashion. Since the ban was promulgated, for example, the WMATA has accepted ads for yoga, which is based on Hindu spirituality, as well as the Salvation Army, which is a Protestant Christian organization. Commercial ads pegged to the “holiday season” would also presumably survive WMATA scrutiny, even though the “season” in question refers to Christian and Jewish holy days.

No government authority should exercise such broad and unaccountable discretion when it comes to restricting First Amendment rights, even if the policy were applied uniformly. As it is, the policy prevents political, civil-society, commercial, and religious groups of all stripes from making their pitch, so to speak, in the nation’s capital, home base for all three branches of the U.S. government.

The cultural impact of the policy is equally deplorable. Years ago, the late [Catholic theologian and intellectual] Richard John Neuhaus and other social conservatives raised the alarm about the “naked public square”—democracies shorn of Judeo-Christianity and the public moral culture essential to sustaining freedom. The naked public square flies in the face of an American constitutional tradition that invites religious symbols and ideas while maintaining the basic secularity of the state.

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.