Timing, they say, is everything.  With investigations by the FBI and the Federal Elections Commission effectively quashing Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) hopes for a fifth term in Congress, one could almost hear her closeted husband Marcus’ sphincter waffle shut at the prospect of a stay-at-home wife.  But the gods swiftly sent a reprieve in the form of actor Michael Douglas, who avouched that throat cancer is caused by cunnilingus-transmitted HPV.   So Marcus, who runs a string of Christian pray-away-the-gay counseling clinics, can plausibly eschew the old lady’s Filet-O-Fish sandwich in favor of eating more ass than the towel boy at Steamworks.

True, the Feds are probing whether Bachmann’s presidential campaign bribed state Senator Kent Sorenson for his support in Iowa’s 2012 Presidential caucuses, but the fact remains that her re-election prospects were already rather dim.  Last year, challenger Jim Graves came within a few votes of unseating the incumbent despite being outspent 12:1.  Yet Graves sees no reason to run again: “There’s no way anyone could run and win who would be worse than Michele Bachmann.”  Then again, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford may have just proved otherwise.

Sanford, who as governor stole public funds and ran off to Argentina to diddle his mistress, just won back his old seat in the     U. S. House of Representatives.  Go figure.  Admittedly, it’s a real head scratcher as to who will be felled by scandal and who can merely shrug it off.  Barney Frank seemed impervious while Mark Foley succumbed.   Ted Kennedy survived while Tom DeLay did not.  So it remains to be seen whether former Congressman Anthony Weiner (#cocktweets) will transcend like Marion Barry and Bill Clinton or founder like James Traficant and Richard Nixon.

Weiner, in his bid to succeed Michael Bloomberg as mayor of Hymietown, is currently polling a close second behind councilwoman Christine Quinn.  A runoff looks all but inevitable, and Weiner, with the benefit of five million dollars left over from previous campaigns, seems to be unshackling himself from those incriminating sexts; a recent Marist poll reveals over half of New York City’s registered voters said he deserved another chance.  Whether his prickly personality is suited to managing a sprawling bureaucracy is an open question, but at least the mayoral hopeful can poke fun at his own foibles; while applying sunscreen during Sunday’s Puerto Rican Day parade, he directed photographers to get “a good shot of me lubing up.”