You all know screen the terminal multiplexor with terminal emulation.
And you all know the nerving fact that it can not handle '~' for $HOME
if you want to load a configuration file via the command line.
And you all know that the screen developers don't code on it anymore.
Off course this doesn't make sense, the code is one of the ugliest I ever saw.
I wrote a patch for this misbehaviour, you will get it on:
http://www.ngolde.de/download/screen-4.2.0-tildeashomeuse.patch.
I filed a wishlist bug against the debian package, hopefully Adam Lazur will include
it in future packages, I hate this behaviour.