Leave it to John McCain to just pull any old thing out of his ass. The latest is the wildfires in Arizona, which McCain is trying to pin on illegal immigrants:

Latino activists accused U.S. Senator John McCain of “fanning the flames” of intolerance Saturday after he blamed illegal immigrants for some of the massive wildfires sweeping Arizona.

In a press conference after touring the scorched fire-damaged areas, the former presidential candidate said “there is substantial evidence that some of these fires have been caused by people who crossed our border illegally.”

In addition to following forest maintenance measures, McCain said a solution to future fires would be a “secure border” to keep immigrants from coming into the US and setting campfires.

But for McCain, the problem is that this isn’t true. According to U.S. Forest Service there is no evidence that these fires were started by illegal immigrants, even though they do believe a human factor to be involved.

That isn’t stopping McCain though! When confronted about his false claims, the story simply changes to:

As far as McCain is concerned, is the Forest Service lying? Not at all, the senator’s office said. McCain was simply talking about a different fire.

And Steve Benen really sums it up nicely:

Got that? McCain toured the Wallow fire in Southeastern Arizona, spoke at a press conference for reporters covering the Wallow fire in Southeastern Arizona, talked about immigrants as being responsible, but was really just talking about some other fire.

So where is this fire you are talking about, Senator? You have made the accusation against an entire group of people, and one of a felonious nature – the burden of proof is now in your hands. Where is this fire and what evidence is there?

If John McCain can’t provide any evidence to his claims then he either needs to apologize or resign (or both). These boogie-man theories of the right are not only misleading to the public, but they are also insulting to people. It needs to stop and the media needs to start calling these people out more for their baseless attacks.