Free Republic

A Pennsylvania mom admitted giving her teen daughter psychedelic mushrooms and marijuana during a “bonding experience,” authorities said. Brandy Lee Betz, 42, was charged with felony child endangerment after she was reported to cops in June regarding her drug use earlier this year with her 14-year-old daughter, according to an affidavit obtained by the Patriot-News. The referral indicated Betz gave the teen “shrooms” and marijuana while in her Middletown home. Dauphin County child welfare officials conducted a parallel probe and Betz confessed to smoking pot with the girl, according to the affidavit.

Dauphin County will not yet move into the yellow phase of Gov. Tom Wolf’s coronavirus reopening plan, even if neighboring counties like Cumberland and York are among the 12 new ones that are allowed to do so next Friday. Dauphin County Commissioners Jeff Haste and Mike Pries responded to the news with frustration, with Haste calling it “political payback.” Here is everything we know as to why Dauphin is stuck in the red phase, otherwise known as the complete stay at home order. Who is moving to yellow next week? The twelve counties are: Adams, Beaver, Carbon, Columbia, Cumberland, Juniata,...

Wow. Big, big news today coming out of Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. There, the County Board Chairman, Jeff Haste, issued an open letter to the people of the state that he was making the decision to re-open his county in defiance of Democrat Governor Tom Wolfe’s absurd, illogical order extending statewide lockdowns through June 5. Several things to note here: Dauphin County is home to Harrisburg, the state’s capital city. It is not some rural backwater, but a robust county with roughly 280,000 residents. Haste himself appears to be a Republican, although his bio page does not list a party affiliation....

HARRISBURG, Pa. — A Pennsylvania state senator who was accused of sexual assault and asked to resign by the governor is now suing the accuser. Sen. Daylin Leach filed a defamation lawsuit Monday against a woman who said Leach sexually assaulted her in 1991, when she was Leach was an attorney at the time and represented the woman's mother in an attempted murder trial. In the defamation suit, the woman is said to have "publish(ed), republish(ed), and widely disseminate(d) a salacious and despicable falsehood." Last week, WGAL reported that state Senate Democrats launched an internal investigation into the complaint against...