Weigel

Noted Birther and Huckabee Backer Plans to Bring Fetus to Ohio Committee Hearing

Do I need to continue past the headline? Probably, sure. Tomorrow in Ohio, Janet Porter of Faith2Action will bring “two in-utero babies” to testify before a committee hearing on a “heartbeat bill,” which would ban abortions after a heartbeat can be detected in a fetus. They “will appear live before the committee by an ultrasound projector which is able to not only show that baby’s moving arms and legs, but also display–in color–the baby’s beating heart.”

We could stop there, but we’d be denying ourselves the joy of Janet Porter. A longtime pro-life and religious right activist, whom I first met a 2009 Eagle Forum/WorldNetDaily conference in St. Louis, Porter is also a WorldNetDaily columnist. Her column about this bill includes lyrics from a parody of “99 Luftballoons”:

99 red heart balloons
Floating in the winter sky
Wouldn’t it be really neat?
To protect us from
our first heartbeat?
Ohio babies spring to life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky
Where 99 red heart balloons go by 

There’s more! After the 2008 election, Porter used her column and radio show to spread conspiracy theories about Barack Obama’s citizenship.

there are many reasons to doubt whether Barack Obama meets the requirements for the office of president. First, there’s that pesky tape from Sarah Obama, Barack’s grandmother, where she says, “I was in the delivery room in (Mombosa) Kenya when he was born Aug. 4, 1961.” Secondly, there’s the matter of U.S. law. If only one parent was an American citizen, as in Obama’s case, the law at the time of Obama’s birth required one parent to have been an American citizen for at least 10 years – five of which had to have happened after the age of 14. Since Obama’s mother was only 18 at the time of Obama’s birth, he would not qualify as an American citizen if his grandmother is right about him being born abroad.

Thirdly, there’s no original birth certificate – just a “certification of live birth” posted on a website experts say is forged and altered. Fourthly, there’s the issue of Indonesian citizenship, which is a prerequisite to attending school there. Add to that the fact that Obama’s stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, is listed as his father on his Indonesian school records. If he had U.S. citizenship, according to Indonesian law, he would have lost it when he attended school there or if he was adopted by his stepfather as his records indicate.

But there are a lot of conservatives on the fringes who’ve talked like this. Why bother with Porter? I’m only paying attention because Porter was an early endorser of Mike Huckabee’s 2008 campaign; at that 2009 event, she invited Huckabee, he appeared, and she introduced him.


Janet Porter Introduces Mike Huckabee
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