Handgun owners sued the District of Columbia yesterday, charging that although D.C. requires "a permit to carry a handgun in public," it regularly refuses "to issue such permits and refuses" to allow the possession of any handgun that would be carried in public."

Two plaintiffs in the case initially had their applications to carry their handguns initially denied by D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier, but these were later approved.  The lawsuit did not explain the subsequent reversals of their initial 'carry permit' denials.

A federal appeals court ruled that Amir Oveissi's legal claims for wrongful death and the intentional infliction of emotional distress against Iran and its Ministry of Information and Security ('MOIS,' or 'VEVAK' in Farsi) must be considered under French law, allowing him to potentially hold the country and its security apparatus liable for his grandfather Gholam Oveissi's 1984 assassination of in Paris, France.

Gholam Oveissi was a four-star general and Chief of Iran's Armed Forces under the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. At Iran's direction, the Iranian-trained and funded Hezbollah terrorist group assassinated Amir Oveissi's grandfather while operating under the nom-de-guerre "Islamic Jihad."

While the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act ('FSIA') grants foreign countries immunity from being sued under, the federal law also makes an exception for state-sponsored terrorism, allowing plaintiffs to seek damages.

A federal grand jury just indicted 89 year-old James Wenneker Von Brunn for the June 10, 2009 murder of Stephen Tyrone Johns, a guard at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

In addition to first-degree murder charges under D.C. law, the indictment charges Von Brunn with assault, violating federal civil rights laws, committing federal and District hate crimes, and weapons violations.