Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was in Moscow on June 17 to meet with newly installed Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, making Kissinger the first American to have an audience with Vladimir Putin’s protégé and personally selected successor. “I have followed with great interest your becoming president and the plans you have put forward in some of your speeches,” the Russian press reported Kissinger as saying to Medvedev. “I wish you every success. It is important for Russia and important for the world.” Although it has not been reported, Dr. Kissinger undoubtedly also met with former President Vladimir Putin — who has now assumed the position of prime minister — and Yevgeny Primakov, the former foreign minister, prime minister, KGB chief, and supervisor of Soviet Mideast terrorism operations.

On March 13 the Oklahoma House passed House Joint Resolution 1089, sponsored by Rep. Charles Key and Sen. Randy Brogdon, “claiming sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over certain powers,” by an overwhelming vote of 92 to 3. Opponents of the measure in the Senate managed to keep it from being debated and voted on before this year’s legislative session ended.

On June 26, by handing down a 5-4 decision in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which had struck down provisions of the District’s Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975 as unconstitutional. The act restricted residents from owning handguns — except for those “grandfathered” in by registration prior to 1975 or held by active or retired law-enforcement officers. Additionally, the law required that even rifles and shotguns be kept “unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.”