I find myself alarmed at Judicial Activism, which seems designed to take away majority rule in the United States. People just don’t seem to notice that majority rule is being eroded by things like judicial activism. Here is a letter I wrote to the Poughkeepsie Journal about this subject:

It is now less than 8 months before the next president takes office, and the leftists in the media are still trying to pressure the Republicans to pick a replacement for Justice Scalia. Why? Because having 5 activists on the court would render the next President and Congress, ineffective. Judicial activism is a pox on our legislative process. By using some semantic trick, the justice branch of our government can nullify any law that it does not like via the process of Judicial Review. This activism is most evident in the recent Obergefell decision. In this case, the Supreme Court decided the 14th amendment meant that a California law defining marriage as being between a man and a woman was unconstitutional. The problem is, equal protection does not apply, because gay people were always allowed to get married! What really happened is, activists redefined marriage and then applied the 14^th amendment. The justice branch cannot redefine marriage; that is the responsibility of the legislative branch. This activism is dangerous for every American. Maybe you liked the Obergefell decision, but imagine if right wing activists got a majority in the Supreme Court and started nullifying things like the environmental protection act! I am guessing that you wouldn’t like that and would be then calling for an end to judicial activism! It is time that Americans stopped supporting the use of un-democratic actions to get their way. It is time to end activism in the courts!

My pastor is from the Houlon Maine area. He asked me to look at the connection between spiritual darkness in that area and the Salem Witch trials. I found a connection! Here it is:

Aaron Putnam and Joseph Houlton started a village in 1807. They named it for Houlton, who had moved to Maine from the more populated part of Massachusetts. Curiously, the Putnam family and the Houlton family may have been from Danvers Massachusetts (a.k.a Salem Town). The Putnam family benefited greatly from the witch trials, ending up with the Nurse homestead after Rebecca Nurse was killed as a witch. Also, a prominent politician during the Revolutionary war called Samuel Holten was from Danvers also. I have not been able to determine if Aaron Putnam and Joseph Houlton are related to the the Putnams and the Holtens from Danvers,

As for the spiritual darkness in Houlton, I would attribute this to the Unitarian church that is prominent in Houlton. The Unitarian movement came out of Harvard University after a prominent Congregationalist pastor of the First Church of Boston named Charles Chauncy, opposed the “Great Awakening” that occurred in the mid 18th century. Chauncy was probably the last Congregationalist pastor of the First Church, and now the church is a Unitarian Church.

The First Church of Boston was also the church where Cotton Mather was Puritan pastor during the Salem witch trials. Cotton Mather and others later tried to diminish his role in the trials, but all the evidence is that Mather was one of the main impetus behind the trials. Robert Calef who was a layman, wrote a book critical of the witch trials and Mather. Calef may be a person I want to emulate as I start this new phase of my life in Christ.