Comment on The week's good news: September 6, 2018

DEDHAM, Mass. — A judge ordered the jury in the Karen Read murder trialto continue deliberating Monday after they said for a second time that they were deadlocked. Jurors had told Judge Beverly Cannone on Friday that they were deadlocked, only for her to ask them to continue deliberating. They returned after the weekend in just over an hour Monday to say little had changed.

More than two months after hearing oral arguments, the Supreme Court on Monday partially backed former President Donald Trump’s claim that he is immune from criminal prosecution for actions he took while in office. In a 6-3 decision split along ideological lines, the Supreme Court ruled former Presidents are largely immune from prosecution for official acts, but not actions they took in office that aren’t part of their job responsibilities—a decision that will have significant consequences for Trump’s remaining criminal cases and the future of the American presidency. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “Under our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts,” the majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts says.

Almost 250 years ago, four weeks before the battles of Lexington and Concord, Patrick Henry rose in St. John’s Church in Richmond, Va., to urge Americans to arm for a war that he saw as inevitable. He famously concluded his call to arms: “Give me liberty, or give me death.” Patriots embraced Henry’s dramatic refrain, and rallying militia members sewed it into their hunting shirts.

An online petition calling for South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol to be impeached has experienced delays and disruptions following a flood of signatures. People attempting to access the website on Monday experienced four hour delays and some received an error message showing that at least 30,000 people were attempting to use the website at the same time, according to Reuters.

The American path for what is socially accepted in grief is narrow. There’s the perceived need for a brave face, the getting over it, the worry of becoming a burden. There’s the Sisyphean pursuit of closure. There’s the frequently misinterpreted “five stages”—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—which were neither meant as a prescription for how to grieve nor, originally, even really about grief at all.

SEOUL, South Korea — For the first time, North Korean officials have been seen wearing lapel pins with the image of leader Kim Jong Un, another sign the North is boosting his personality cult to the level bestowed on his late dictator father and grandfather. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] North Koreans are required to wear pins over their hearts which for decades bore images of either the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung, or his son Kim Jong Il, or both.