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.
