11. Wide stances must be at least 24 inches.

12. The Constitution shall be strictly adhered to, except for the quaint parts.

13. That government is best which governs for the least.

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In case you haven’t been following The Great Global-Warming Scandal, well, that’s because you don’t read the right blogs. We actually have been following it, just not in public, since anything that has wingnuts that riled up must be less than it appears, and we’d rather wait for someone else to do the heavy lifting.

And who better to step onto the mat than scrawny Nate Silver?

Apparently, the networks of University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit were hacked into last night. Approximately 160 megabytes of files, containing hundreds or thousands of e-mails and documents were leaked as a result of the security breach, reports The Guardian.

See, right there, we’re just not going to deal with 160 megs of materials — the House healthcare bill weighs in at a mere 3.4 megs, and we can barely suffer a page of that.

But Nate, God bless him, fishes out the one item that everyone’s waving like a snake flag — a 1999 email from the CRU’s director to his Evil Minions:

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The Stinque Cap makes a smart fashion statement on any continent. You’ll turn heads wherever you go, and not just because you’re driving on the wrong side of the road. Available for only $16.99 at the Stinqueria!

(Also shown: Blogenfreude and the S.O. at Hampton Court Palace.)

After their recent ratings-grabbing series of “production errors,” Fox News management is promising to really get serious about firing the interns this time if it ever happens again:

That means we will start by going to air with only the most essential, basic, and manageable elements. To share a key quote from today’s meeting: “It is more important to get it right, than it is to get it on.”

If the WiFi at our Remote Office was working right now, we’d hunt down a ferociously clever graphic illustrating Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck “getting it on.” As it stands, we’re limited by what we can squeeze through our iPhone. Consider yourself blessed by our technical difficulties.

Fox News Management Fed Up by Mistakes [Fishbowl DC, via Think Progress]

We know this gives her too much credit, but we can’t help imagine the gentleharpy from Minnesota as Anakin Skywalker:

Q: You’ve been described as Democrats’ Public Enemy No. 1. How do you feel about being a target?

A: In being forceful and fighting for the positions that I’m standing for, I obviously must pose a threat for liberals advancing their agenda. I say that because I grew up a Democrat in a Democrat family. My husband and I both worked on Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign. The first time I ever came to Washington was to dance at Walter Mondale’s inaugural ball. It was a thrill for my husband and me, and we were both happy to work on behalf of Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter. We really believed in them when we were in college. So in some ways I don’t understand why the Democratic Party would be opposed to me, because I stand for the same values that my parents stood for when we were Democrats.

Wait — Jimmy Carter? In Michele’s defense, she was 20 in 1976, and we all have moments we’d sooner forget from our college days. But if she needs a reminder why we love her so, here’s the interview that put her on the map — the one where she demanded that Congresscritters be investigated to “find out, are they they are pro-America or anti-America?”

Bachmann says she is doing what she was elected to do [St. Cloud Times, via Political Wire]

The UK Literary Review’s shortlist for the annual Bad Sex in Fiction award is out, and what better way to start the week than some lame fucking? The winning loser will be announced November 30 and receive a plaster foot. Which, we imagine, fits perfectly in the Stinque Award’s Crystal Shoe.

• “I came suddenly, a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg.” (Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones)
• “She took my head in both hands and guided it downward, between her fragrant thighs. ‘Yoni puja — pray, pray at my portal.'” (Paul Theroux, A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta)
• “The green cock plunged in and out of the abundant naked body sprawled beneath it, slow at first, then faster and harder, then harder still, and all of Tracy’s curves and hollows moved in unison with it. This was not soft porn.” (Philip Roth, The Humbling)

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Frank Rich, who unlike us gets paid to blather, puts his salary to use:

Easily the most startling passage in “Going Rogue,” running more than two pages, collates extended excerpts from a prayerful letter Palin wrote to mark the birth of Trig, her child with Down syndrome. This missive’s understandable goal was to reassert Palin’s faith and trust in God. But Palin did not write her letter to God; she wrote the letter from God, assuming His role and voice herself and signing it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.”

Every week, when FlyingChainSaw doesn’t relieve us of the chore, we churn out a silly reader poll for the passing amusement of our devoted audience. So last Sunday, with that book about to be unleashed on an undeserving nation, we asked “What’s your favorite part?” And among the answers — currently trending first — was “The moment God tells her, ‘You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.'”

We had no idea we had pegged the book’s most noteworthy passage. But if Roland Emmerich would like to buy the rights to our other apocalyptic predictions for his next disaster-porn blockbuster, he knows where to find us.

The Pit Bull in the China Shop [NYT]