I heard about Stephen Colbert testifying before the House immigration subcommittee earlier today, too, and I thought someone was pulling my leg. But, no, the hearing announcement is right here and he’s on the list (he’ll be a Democrat witness). He’ll be there because he did a segment this summer on the United Farm Workers’ “Take My Job” campaign, which essentially dared Americans to do farm work. (I wrote about the stunt here.) He and the subcommittee chairwoman, Zoe Lofgren (D., Calif.), went out together and picked cantaloupes, or whatever.
My first thought was that the hearing is intended to make the case for the other targeted amnesty (other than the Dream Act) that the open-borders crowd has been touting — the AgJobs bill, which would legalize illegal farmworkers and create a continuing flow of indentured servants to work in the fields for a few years before they’re manumitted and given green cards. And that is indeed the point, according to a friend on the Hill. So, does that mean the Democratic leadership is actually going to bring up the AgJobs amnesty up before the election or during the lame-duck session? Probably not, my friend said: “They just thought it would be funny to have Stephen Colbert at a congressional hearing.”
So, while Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is intently focusing on naming post offices, the Democrats on the immigration subcommittee are focused on the jibbering of a clown. Gibbon’s observation may be apt to our own Congress:
The senate of Rome, losing all connection with the Imperial court and the actual constitution, was left a venerable but useless monument of antiquity on the Capitoline hill.