A pretty obvious parallel to the Birthers would be all the people running around claiming Bush stole the election, fall ways short on the accusation scale that Bush faced over 9/11 and FDR over Pearl Harbor, of being mass murderers of their own people, most presidents get hit by that, Birthers aren't too bad on that scale, and passing a fairly empty but legit law to appease them isn't exactly high on the brutal political maneuvers scale. IMO birthers are wrong and need to get over it, and this bill was mostly pointless, but we've had them for 2 years and moon landing hoax theories and JFK assassination theories for two generations now, plus all the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, Mason, Illuminati, New World Order theories and more and more, Elvis Lives theories seemed to have died off finally, that something. These things tend to be harder to kill off than Jason Voorhees and have more lives than a herd of cats, don't waste your attention on them, the most you'll achieve is vindicating other people from the other side of crazy bringing up their own pet theories about whatever bizarre conspiracy they favor. Most people believe in some weird conspiracy or other, sometimes they don't even know its considered fringe - or else they'd not believe it, which is a crappy reason to disbelieve something anyway - they've just heard some evidence and know someone they trust who believes it and never really thought about it much. Most of the people who buy into this stuff are no more crazy than people who think more babies are born on full moons, they heard it somewhere and it struck a chord with them, an awful lot of people think JFK was killed by the CIA or KGB or LBJ or some non-3-letter initial person or group, some are total cranks but most just heard it a lot, last poll I saw on JFK was few years back, 70% believed there was a plot, not a lone gunmen, think it was like 20% for the moon landings being a hoax, I doubt most of those people are crazy or irrational.