In a case currently before the Supreme Court, a Lutheran church is fighting Missouri’s decision not to allow it to benefit from a statewide program in which public funds are used to resurface playgrounds. Nathan Diament explains the case’s implications:

The legal basis of the denial is the Missouri state constitution’s “Blaine Amendment,” which states: “no money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect, or creed of religion” and no government entity “shall ever make an appropriation or pay from any public fund . . . anything in aid of any . . . church.” . . .

This provision . . . carries a pernicious pedigree. The great wave of Catholic immigration to America in the 1800s gave rise to strong anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic sentiment. In 1875, Senator James Blaine of Maine proposed an amendment to the federal constitution using the above-quoted text. The senator’s goal was to deny Catholic schools the kind of government funding that “common schools” (which were essentially Protestant) were receiving.

The amendment failed to garner a two-thirds vote in the Senate, but . . . the anti-Catholic forces succeeded in having their no-aid language adopted into all but ten state constitutions. . . .

[O]ver the past 25 years, the Supreme Court’s church-state jurisprudence has shifted to hold that while the government must not favor a particular religion, or religion in general, the Constitution also does not demand that the government disfavor religion. . . . This newer, sensible jurisprudence is at odds with the anti-religious, strict-separation approach of the Blaine Amendments.

This conflict is not an academic one. The high court’s ruling in the [Missouri] case will directly impact the very safety and welfare of the Jewish community and other faith communities.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.