What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers?

Yesterday Stephen Colbert testified before a House Judiciary subcommittee about the need to provide more visas and better working conditions for migrant farm workers. He was in character, cracking jokes, during part of the hearing, but answered seriously when asked why he took an interest in this issue:

“I like talking about people who don’t have any power and it seems like one of the least powerful people in the United States are migrant workers who come and do our work but don’t have any rights as a result. But yet we still invite them to come here and at the same time ask them to leave. […] Migrant workers suffer and have no rights.”

Representative Steve King was at the hearing and didn’t care for Colbert’s stunt. He suggested that Colbert didn’t really spend a day working on a farm, as he claimed to have done, and accused Colbert of disparaging American workers who “perform the dirtiest, most difficult, most dangerous (jobs) that can be thrown at them.”

Maybe King was jealous that someone advocating for immigration reform grabbed a lot of media attention. Immigration has long been one of King’s pet issues. Fox News invited King on for a segment about whether Colbert’s testimony was appropriate.

Not surprisingly, media commentators seem more interested in the controversy surrounding Colbert’s appearance than in the topic at hand: an agriculture jobs bill that would give undocumented farm workers a path to U.S. citizenship.

This is an open thread.

UPDATE: Both Governor Chet Culver and Republican candidate Terry Branstad are scheduled to announce “major endorsements” on Monday morning. Who do you think those could be? My guess is the Branstad endorser will be a business person who has supported some Democrats in the past.