Rent-a-Congress

An excerpt from Congressman Jim McDermott's post on DailyKos:

Wednesday the Congress convened in joint session to hear an address by the leader of a major ally -- an infrequent and usually solemn occasion. Instead, I think we were cast as extras in an orchestrated political event for Italian TV. We set aside legislative business and filed into the House Chamber only to hear right-of-center media billionaire Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi speak in Italian with no interpreter. Organized applause was prompted at certain points from the uncomprehending crowd (Members of Congress plus "blue-coated interns, sent in to fill empty seats").
[snip] . . . The rousing reception aired live overseas, on Berlusconi's own TV stations, skirting his country's equal-time laws in a tough election cycle.

A joint session? Now maybe I have missed something over the years, or maybe (international?) lobbyists have simply taken over and we no longer even pretend to have a representative government. But something here is very badly wrong if this is true. (Well, duh!) And this under a party that insists on our sovereignty against international treaties and human rights courts?

What a slap in the face to the Congress! Or maybe they are so used to being for-rent that they no longer notice? It is bad enough that the Prez uses the armed forces as props, but for a foreign leader to use not just the Capitol building but the Congress itself! (Splutter, splutter.)