Remember the nutty theory going around a while back that President Obama's book Dreams From My Father was actually written by Bill Ayers? That was the work of WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill. Well, Cashill has a new conspiracy theory to peddle: Barack Obama Sr. isn't really the father of President Obama. No, really.

Cashill lays out his claim in his January 20 WND column, replete with secret sources, muumuus, and the declaration that in a photograph, the father of Obama's mother looked a little too happy to be “standing right next to the African guy who allegedly knocked up his 17-year-old daughter.”

From Cashill's column:

Then, too, those who have read “Dreams” are almost invariably surprised by the fond memories Ann's father, Stanley Dunham, has of his putative son-in-law. These memories do not deceive.

A photo taken on the occasion of Obama Sr.'s celebratory departure from Hawaii shows a smiling Stanley Dunham -- looking all the world like a young Barack Obama Jr. -- standing right next to the African guy who allegedly knocked up his 17-year-old daughter and is now abandoning them. As the father of two daughters, this doesn't smell right at all.

One of my correspondents -- let's call him Frank Hardy -- is convinced that the Dunham family left for Hawaii abruptly right after Ann's graduation in June 1960 because Ann was pregnant. He makes a good case.

If a black guy had impregnated Ann, this would explain the family's abrupt departure to Hawaii, the one state in the union where a mixed-race baby could grow up almost unnoticed. It certainly explains the move to Hawaii better than the dreamy rationale Stanley Dunham offers in “Dreams.”

This scenario makes sense of any number of other details as well, like Ann's angry resistance to the move, her mother's willingness to quit her job as an escrow officer in nearby Bellevue, Wash., Ann's poor performance in her limited first-semester courses at the University of Hawaii, her failure to enroll for the second semester and, most of all, her otherwise inexplicable return to Seattle in August 1961 -- if not earlier.

True, to make this scenario work, which we have to add one major variable, but it is a credible one. Imagine Ann coming home from class one day in Hawaii in fall 1960 in one of her all-concealing muumuus -- she had written friends that muumuus were worn on campus -- and telling her father about a charming, larger-than-life Kenyan in her class.

The scheming Stanley befriends Barack Sr. and enlists him in his plot. He explains that a boy named Barack, the legitimate son of a Kenyan, could move through American life more seamlessly than a boy named, say, Stanley, the illegitimate son of an American black.

Stanley tells Barack Sr. that he can make it worth his while. Ann understands. As to Barack Sr., he has to contribute nothing to the proceedings but his name -- with his “son” born in February 1961, not August.

A marriage license from Maui -- the county specified in the divorce papers -- assures that no marriage announcement will appear in the Honolulu papers. Ann will leave in time for the 1961 fall semester at the University of Washington -- perhaps months before -- and she will not return until Obama Sr. leaves for Harvard.

In addition to this latest theory, Cashill is sticking with the idea that Ayers wrote Dreams. (Cashill has credited Obama biographer Christopher Andersen as vindicating his claim, even though Andersen was merely repeating what Cashill had claimed, and Andersen has said that “I definitely do not say [Ayers] wrote Barack Obama's book.”)

Needless to say, Cashill has a book coming out detailing all of his crazy Obama conspiracy-mongering.