Notorious Extremist Weslin and Others Arrested at Capitol
by Wendy Norris, RH Reality Check
November 6, 2009 - 6:00am (Print)
Notorious anti-abortion activist Father Norman Weslin was
among a dozen protesters arrested by U.S. Capitol Police outside House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi's district office Thursday at a raucous protest against the health
reform bill.
According to video captured by protesters accompanying
Randall Terry, who leads the newly dubbed Operation Rescue Insurrecta Nex,
Weslin was initially seated inside Pelosi's suite in the Cannon House Office
Building clutching a stack of papers in his lap. Meanwhile, anti-abortion
protesters shouted "kill the bill" slogans and ripped up pages of the
Democrats proposed health care legislation in the hallway.
Police arrested the demonstrators for disorderly conduct and
refusing to leave Pelosi's secondary office around 2:15 p.m. EST.
Approximately, 100 people filled the concourse alternately shouting
anti-abortion slogans and demanding the police release the protesters.
While law enforcement futilely attempted to clear the
hallway of on-lookers, press and five bill supporters who donned hospital gowns
and faux plastic bare buttocks, Weslin suddenly appeared in the doorway and
stumbled across the office threshold.
The Catholic priest, dressed all in black, a clerical collar
and black rubber Crocs, fell hard on his back on the floor in the hallway. A Capitol
police officer attended to Weslin and was soon joined by colleagues who
carried the uncooperative 78-year-old veteran protester outside.
During the hullabaloo, Pelosi was in the Speaker's office
inside the Capitol and not in her California congressional district suite where
the protest took place.
Talking Points Memo reporter Christina Bellantoni captured
video of Weslin's detention and escort into a waiting ambulance outside the
Cannon House Office Building. A crowd milling in the area following the
anti-health care reform Tea Party rally organized by House Republicans began
singing an off-key and lyric-mangled version of "God Bless America":
Then, they began heckling the police:
Weslin is best known as the founder of the Lambs of
Christ, a nomadic paleo-conservative network of activists that stage clinic
invasions and general mayhem goading police to arrest them.
The group has long been linked to violent extremists in the
anti-abortion movement. Early Lambs members include James Kopp, who is serving
a life sentence in the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian, and Shelley Shannon, who
is imprisoned for a series of arson and acid attacks on clinics following her
1993 shooting of Dr. George Tiller.
This latest public folly marks nearly 80 arrests for Weslin.
This sort of ego-driven attention seeking does NOT convince people to make abortion illegal. In fact, extremists of this type may be the reason why so many people who 'don't believe in abortion' think the law should be kept close to the way it is right now - legal with restrictions increasing by trimester. Nobody in their right mind wants whackaloons like this to have any say whatsoever in their or anyone else's medical care.
The extremism has undoubtedly alienated potential anti-abortion allies from the movement.
The cognitive dissonance of seeing Fr. Norman Welsin, who should be considered a domestic terrorist, seated in the receiving room of Speaker Pelosi's office was jaw-dropping. I'm really shocked that the media didn't pick up on that very real security threat.
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The political action committee behind the Tea Party Express (TPE) -- which already has been slammed as inauthentic and corporate-controlled by rival factions in the Tea Party movement -- directed almost two thirds of its spending during a recent reporting period back to the Republican consulting firm that created the PAC in the first place.
Our Country Deserves Better (OCDB) spent around $1.33 million from July through November, according to FEC filings examined by TPMmuckraker. Of that sum, a total of $857,122 went to Sacramento-based GOP political consulting firm Russo, Marsh, and Associates, or people associated with it.
OCDB, which built the Tea Party Express, is essentially a Russo, Marsh creation, as we've detailed. The PAC's site was registered in July 2008 by Sal Russo, the firm's founder. That site also lists Russo as the PAC's "chief strategist." Tea Party Express fundraising emails, sent by OCDB and obtained by TPMmuckraker, come from another Russo, Marsh employee, Joe Wierzbicki.
Just for good measure, legendary GOP bamboozler Howard Kaloogian is also on OCDB's board, and has close ties to Russo, Marsh.
The services for which Russo, Marsh was paid appear to be legitimate campaign needs. For instance, it took in several hundred thousand for what OCDB listed in the FEC filings as "PAC Email Newsletter Costs - Generic Fun." That would appear to refer to the numerous fund-raising and activism emails sent to volunteers to promote and build the Tea Party Express -- a nationwide bus tour to build opposition to the Obama agenda -- many of them by Wierzbicki.
But one expert on political action committees told TPMmuckraker it was unusual for a PAC to direct so much spending back to the entity that created it. And the spending details raised hackles among members of the Tea Party Patriots, a rival faction of conservative activists who have denounced TPE as a creature of Republican political professionals that lacks grassroots authenticity. In an email to a Patriots group that was obtained by TPMmuckaker, one TPPer who had examined the filings asked, "What would the true grassroots people think if they knew their money is being spent in this manner?"
A message left in the general mailbox for Russo, Marsh was not immediately returned.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/majority_of_tea_party_...
