Of all the obviously crazy kooks on America’s far right, Michele Bachmann (above) gets my vote for craziest. The Minnesota congresswoman looks crazy, acts crazy and comes up with the craziest conspiracy theories you could imagine. So it doesn’t surprise me that she’s right out in front of the current media crusade against President Obama. Especially since the FBI has been investigating her campaign spending. It’s no secret that cornered rats will fight back.

Bachmann has always been a wild-eyed foe of Obamacare, conjuring up such false threats as death panels and an epidemic of tax-funded abortions, but she is outdoing herself in the prevailing anti-Obama feeding frenzy. (Isn’t it discouraging how even liberals like Robert Reich and Maureen Dowd have joined the pack yapping at the president’s heels?)

In a recent interview with the arch-conservative site World Net Daily, Bachmann managed to bundle the IRS, Benghazi and Obamacare into one omnibus “scandal.” Here’s her theory, as reported in The Atlantic Wire:

 The House Oversight Committee’s hearings on Benghazi spooked the White House so much that they decided to take advantage of “a Friday dump day” (Bachmann’s words) to “confess to such a flagrant misuse of politics and power” (World Net Daily’s) as the IRS investigation of Tea Party groups. But what really worries Bachmann is that the IRS, which is largely responsible for administration of Obamacare, will use its new-found partisanship to “deny or delay access to health care” for conservatives. 

This kind of nonsense is a stretch even for the imaginative leader of the House Tea Party Caucus, but it’s what you might expect with the Federal Election Commission, the Office of Congressional Ethics, the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee, the Urbandale Police Department – and now the FBI – scrutinizing her campaign spending.

And it’s one of the infuriating tactics that Republican politicians have become notorious for – spreading lies attacking opponents for committing the “dirty tricks” that they, themselves, are guilty of.

Bachmann is among the most blatant offender, incessantly making up stories and repeating lies concocted by other right-wing scandal mongers. At the Conservative Political Action Conference in March, for example, she came up with this whopper:

A new book is out talking about the perks and the excess of the $1.4-billion-a-year presidency that we’re paying for. And this is a lifestyle that is one of excess. Now we find out that there are five chefs on Air Force One.

Of course, the book was wrong – as reviewers were quick to point out. But that didn’t deter the crazy congresswoman.

Bachmann is also helping to distract Congress from the country’s real problems by introducing time-wasting bills in the House. And, to nobody’s surprise, her fellow-Republicans are delightedly joining the masquerade. For example, the House recently passed her bill to repeal Obamacare. It was the 37th such bill passed by the House, and like its predecessors,  there’s no chance it will become law. It’s sure to be blocked in the Democrat-controlled Senate. And if it miraculously survived the Senate, the White House would veto it.

Bachmann illustrates one of the sad flaws in America’s democratic system. The most despicable people can run for Congress, and – because they will stoop to anything – they often get elected. But there is also a remedy, and we can only hope that Minnesota voters will use this remedy to address the Bachmann situation in November 2014.