Wilkes-Barre man: 'Witches are trying to kill me'

Times Leader ^ | 9-16-2004 | JON FOX

[Awestruck]

Let's see if he floats...

[Cagey]

Won't she melt?

[blackdog]

The pocono area (Scranton/Wilkes) has super high unemployment. It's a drug manufacturing and distribution area which supplies New York, North Jersey, and Philadelphia. It's densely wooded and full of deliverance types. Severe alchohol problems and pretty much lawless badlands surrounding old pockets of deteriorating dead industry towns.

I had a summer home close to the area. It's a big summer vacation cottage destination. During the 80's and 90's it was over-run by New Yorkers.

[Born Conservative]

I interpreted that he was saying the area's problems are from meth use.

Wilkes Barre, Scranton has produced more insane news for a while now. The neck-bomb decapitating bank robber, the bodies in freezers, the crazy unknown gender county employee who steals everything not nailed down, witches, Rodham brothers humpin the neighbor's wife, the minor league baseball fiasco, the Adelphia scandal, and a bunch more........It's not a big population! Oh yeah, the abusive special education teacher who tortures toddlers is from the area too. This region is something for Scully and Mulder to investigate. I think a lot of the craziness is from meth use.

[sharktrager]

Because Bill is his brother...and it sounds like he is in jail.

[Hunble]

As a teen while in the Boy Scouts around 1970, we had a camping trip into the mountains of north Georgia.

Oh my God, Hillbillies are real!

Years later, when the movie Deliverance was released, I could only laugh.

YUP!

[blackdog]

It's also where Bill Clinton stowed his mamma. It's where the Rodham family has it's summer cottage(White Lake). Many, many acres of potent weed is grown in the area. The crazies who engage in the enterprise flourish there.

I'd rather be an unarmed cop in Baghdad than a state trooper assigned to that area.(there are very few areas with local cops in the poconos)

[cinives]

The article states what the law is in Pennsylvania, without endorsing or opposing it.

Actually, this is inaccurate. The article states what the superintendant THINKS is the law, not what the law actually is in PA re homeschooling.The article says Wilkes-Barre Area School District Superintendent Jeff Namey said parents who home-school their children must submit an application to the district, a curriculum, and a portfolio of students' work at the end of the year.

This is a gross misinterpretation of the law. The law mandates an affidavit informing the school district of the intent to homeschool, a list of objectives, and an evaluation and portfolio at the end of the school year. PA homeschool law does not allow a school district to check curriculum or grant a school district the mandate to approve homeschooling unless a family has been found to have made no progress in education over the year. School districts do not have the power under the law to approve or disapprove except after due process hearings.

This guy may be an idiot and a crank, but the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness does not allow interference by authorities unless physical harm occurs. Note that neighbors were not concerned. Obviously, these people are not considered a threat to anything other than their own mental well-being.

This is just another example of do-gooders trying to tell someone how to live their life. I say, butt out.

[Homo_homini_lupus]

Don't assume all self-described witches are "crazy".

I know quite a few "self-described witches."

I feel perfectly justified calling them crazy, but that's not based entirely on their choice of theologies. I'm still waiting to see any of them pull off a successful spell casting.

[Born Conservative]

Now, why did you find this story important enough to share with us Freepers?

Judging from the number of replies and views, I'd say it was a popular thread...

[Xenalyte]

Oh, wait, that's bread and apples and very small rocks and cider and gravy and cherries and mud and churches that you throw into the pond. Not to mention a duck.

Burn her!

[ASA Vet]

Throw her into the pond!

As the ancestor of one the the convicted so called witches who was hung at Salem,
I was a little concerned about asking a lady who has a large sword what she'd do.

By the way, my ancestor placed a curse on the crowd as she died.
She turned all them into liberal demoncRATs. (snare drum flam)

[clamper1797]

I know how he feels ... I was married once

[GovernmentShrinker]

I don't homeschool -- don't have kids yet, and will probably have them home-tutored by someone else when I do. But I thin homeschooling is generally an excellent thing, especially pre-high school.

As for your 4H kids, that does sound like a serious problem that needs addressing. Good thing there's a saner dad who wants them. And it's also good that they're involved in this outside activity -- at least it gives sane people a chance to see them, and also gives the kids a chance to see that not everybody lives the way they do.

[Xenalyte]

The only time I have ever fainted was during Deliverance.

I remember the mountain man telling Jon Voight that he had a very purty mouth, and then my classmates said my eyes rolled up in my head and I slithered out the bottom of my desk.

I came to halfway in the fountain outside our building with two classmates and the professor dribbling water on my face, collected myself, walked back inside the classroom - and saw Burt Reynolds' compound fracture. How I didn't faint again I will never know.

[Xenalyte]

And look what happened! Good thing for us she's not around any longer, or she would undoubtedly be able to make those nefarious Harry Potter spells work.

[Lord_Baltar]

Well, How do you reconcile Unrestricted Home Schooling with this Nutjob?

Seriously.

If you don't have any restrictions, isn't this guy just doing what you advocate?

But then if you have restrictions which would keep him from home schooling, isn't that against what you advocate?

Would you be willing to allow psych testing Home School Parents?

uggg, this one is a quandry.

[tmg]

There are likely more Pagan in your community than that, it's just that most of us are quiet about our faith. It's a personal matter, and we don't feel the need to advertise it. It's between us and our God or Goddess.

Please don't let the crazy Pagan convince you that all Pagans are nut cases. Some of us are very normal, and very Republican.

[Shryke]

No, those float. Now that we're straightened out on that....what else floats?

[Hunble]

Judging from the number of replies and views, I'd say it was a popular thread...

I totally agree with you on that point. Even I was surprised that there were more than two replies.