Steven Colbert in Congress

(CBS/AP) House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers told Stephen Colbert how happy he was that the comedian's appearance filled the seats for a hearing on illegal farm workers. Then he tried to kick him out.
Before the Comedy Central comedian launched into his joke-filled testimony, Conyers said he couldn't remember when a hearing drew such a crowd. California Democrat Zoe Lofgren guessed it might have been for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
But then Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, asked Colbert to leave the room, saying: "You run your show, we run the committee."
Colbert, who recently spent a day picking vegetables on a farm in New York, said he was there at the invitation of subcommittee chairman Lofgren. Lofgren signaled that he should stay.
Conyers later withdrew his request.
In his opening statement, which Conyers noted afterward differed from the written remarks submitted to the committee, Colbert maintained the tongue-in-cheek conservative persona that marks his late-night comedy show "The Colbert Report."
"I don't want a tomato picked by a Mexican," he said. "I want it picked by an American. And sliced by a Guatemalan and served by a Venezuelan, in a spa, where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian."
Colbert said he was happy to "use my celebrity to draw attention to this important, complicated issue. I certainly hope that my star power can bump this hearing all the way up to C-Span 1"
He also offered mock solutions to the problem of overdependence on immigrant farm labor, suggesting the "obvious answer is for all of us to stop eating fruits and vegetables."
"And if you look at the recent obesity statistics, you'll see that many Americans have already started," he added.