Representative Jim Moran fell victim to a vigorous maligning from out of town teabaggers last night during his town hall in Reston, VA. Howard Dean was billed as the special guest, but anti-abortion agitator and Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry surprised the crowd by taking center stage.
The event started boisterous and only grew louder as Terry chanted "You Are A Baby Killer" and "We Won't Pay For Murder." Eyes & Ears citizen reporter Ryan J. Reilly captured Randall's outburst on video:
Citizen journalists at the event reported that Congressman Moran incited the crowd further when he suggested there were some people in attendance who don't live in his district and had come only to disrupt the meeting. As Salon reports, Moran first singled out the instigator, demanding that Randall leave the town hall, "but then reconsidered, offering him the chance to ask the first question as long as he ended his protest and kept the question short enough that other people would still have their chance."
Terry declined. Instead he was escorted from the building as he continued to accuse Dean of murdering babies.
Overall the crowd was largely supportive of health care reform, though detractors made themselves easy to spot. FireDogLake did a good job explaining why these protesters were likely not from Moran's district and Ryan J. Reilly caught the juxtaposition in jpg form:
Reston has a voting population that is about 75-80% Democratic, so as Moran noted when Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, started agitating from the crowd, these weren't people who lived there.
Moran finally had to have Terry thrown out. Terry was stirring up the highly emotional and not quite bright teabagger set by ranting that abortion would be covered in this health care bill (thank you Kendrick Meek and Marcy Kaptur, it won't)