Navajo O

Dave Weigel noted a couple weeks ago that he doesn't pay much attention to the Birthers anymore, since they seem to be stuck in a feedback loop. Luckily, there's a new meme that's gaining currency on the right--Obama wants to give the U.S. back to the Native Americans:

The outrage began after the President announced on December 16 that the U.S. would reverse course and support the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. The Declaration was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2007, but the U.S., under President Bush, opposed it.

"The aspirations it affirms -- including the respect for the institutions and rich cultures of Native peoples -- are ones we must always seek to fulfill," the President said of the Declaration at White House Tribal Nations Conference where he announced the reversal. He went on to describe efforts to improve health care, education, and unemployment rates in tribal areas.

...."Perhaps he figures that, as an adopted Crow Indian, he will be the new chief over this revived Indian empire," [Brian] Fischer [of the American Family Association] wrote. "But for the other 312 million of us, I think we'll settle for our constitutional 'We the people' form of government, thank you very much."

No less than John Bolton, George Bush's ambassador to the U.N., actually takes this seriously:

"It's a kind of feel-good document that has so many unclear phrases in it that nobody's really sure what it means when you agree to it," he told FoxNews.com. "It's wrong and potentially dangerous to sign onto a document that you don't fully understand the implications of."

I do sometimes wonder if Obama conspiracy theories are not some elaborate thought experiment on the outer limits of human credulity, gone tragi-comically awry.