House Republicans are scheduled to vote on two separate budget bills this week, each of which would reject funding for the poverty activism group ACORN, despite the fact that ACORN disbanded three years ago.

Is this another one of these bills House Republicans want to pass just because the new guys need more tin-foil gibberish to bring the folks back home? Yeah, it doesn't exist anymore. In a monument to the now-total devotion of the Republican Party to conspiracy theories and fraudulent "reporting," it folded after the same set of Republicans currently piddling their undies over the thought of government targeting people targeted the group of conservative organizers via explicit legislation, as well as all of their individual employees, as well as anyone who was associated with anyone who worked there. The initial crime was some guys putting names like "Mickey Mouse" on voter registration forms in order to cheat ACORN out of a few bucks per collected signature, but then there was a guy in a pimp costume, which should tell you right the hell there that you have gone off the rails, and another guy said that he was pretty sure that ACORN had slashed his tires, and from those days until these days there's a certain set of people in America who honestly believe that ACORN is not only still around, but was and still is a secret army operated by Barack Obama in partnership with the United Nations in order to implement Agenda 21 and something something manatees. Republicans call these people "the base."

Here's an idea. Maybe all the Republicans who are so outraged at government spending that they're willing to butcher said government outright rather than spend another thin dime on programs like "feeding hungry kids" or "making a general attempt to ensure the meat you buy will not poison you" could get together and ask whether we really need a constant stream of meaningless do-nothing bills based on conspiracy theories peddled by charlatans. We could start with asking the folks that introduced these two latest bills, Texas Republicans John Culberson and John Carter.

I know, I know: It's a silly thought. If you got rid of all the do-nothing bills and conspiracy theories, what on earth would Republicans do with themselves?

Alternatively, we need to start peddling our own ridiculous theories. I think the odds are good that we can convince wide swaths of the GOP base that Culberson and Carter are, in fact, merely manatees disguised as humans, put there in an elaborate attempt by the Illuminati to draw suspicion away from the real masterminds of the Agenda 21 plot, a subterranean society of telepathic earthworms bent on reducing humanity to a post-industrial, composting-based society. Those psychic worms slashed my tires, once. I'm sure of it.

