The Washington Independent Profiles Randall Terry.

Read the entire article here.

The man who personified the anti-abortion rights movement of the 1980s and 1990s loves to kid around. It disarms reporters, and it wins over the activists who use the lower level of Terry’s home as the base for Operation Rescue-Insurrecta Nex. (In Latin, it roughly means “Insurrection Until Death.”) In May, People for the American Way released video of Terry closing a press conference on the murdered abortionist George Tiller — Tiller “reaped what he sowed,” said Terry. In response, Terry convened a new press conference where he served Guinness and chicken wings.

For several years, especially after Terry served as the spokesman for the parents of the late Terri Schiavo in 2005, his personality and his antics, as well as hisfinancial and legal decisions, led him to be ostracized from the movement. That’s fine by him — he’s suing the current leadership of Operation Rescue, his original organization, and without much prompting he’ll call leaders of groups like Americans United for Life “a bunch of harlots.” While they deride him or distance themselves from him, Terry is capitalizing on the conservative uprising against President Obama and congressional Democrats. When cameras show up to cover a Tea Party or a health care protest, Terry and his activists are there. If reporters pretend his protests don’t exist, Terry’s small staff churn out their own video and post it on YouTube.

“I think there is a certain element of the media that does not want us to be seen,” said Terry. According to him, the current and unexpected political trouble that pro-abortion rights activists have found themselves in — chiefly the Stupak Amendment that prohibits abortion funding in a public health care plan — is the result of ostentatious and unyielding pressure from activists like him. The newfound political role of Catholic bishops? That’s their attempt to undo the damage they did themselves by not opposing Barack Obama in 2008. “We’re not here for a place at the table. We’re here to take the table and smash it, turn it into firewood.”