"Maybe I’ve been spoiled, but I feel like if this happened at Harvard Law School, a guy like Charles Nesson would be all over the opportunity..."

"... to just hop in, teach from the hip, and turn this upheaval into a Con Law experience like no other. Doesn’t Columbia Law have one professor like that? Doesn’t Columbia have any professors who want to teach just because interacting with young people and shaping minds about constitutional theory is kind of fun?"

Doesn’t Columbia even have any professors who at least want to send the message that lawprofs teach because interacting with young people and shaping minds about constitutional theory is kind of fun?

It's also interesting that at Columbia, a law professor is missing classes because she's going through a divorce. Back in the 1980s, when my first marriage broke up, it happened to coincide with a research grant that gave me a full semester off to write. I've always believed it would have been much better to have had classes to give some structure to those days.

Meanwhile, Instapundit links to Steven Bainbridge who talks about Columbia's solution of lumping 200 students together in one big class. What's the big deal if the teacher is lecturing, which, per Bainbridge, is a good idea anyway.

I suspect the students would have a few questions like: Why am I paying so much tuition if all I'm getting is something I could be watching on the Internet? And why are you paid so much money to lecture in person in front of people who could just as well be watching video of whoever is the very best lawprof lecturer on this subject?

"Should you get divorced in order to make your children better people?"

"What a good parent you are for asking, but, no, of course not: There are easier ways to get the benefits of being non-religious to your children than going through a divorce."

"When you get divorced, all the truths that come out, you sit there and you go, 'What the f*** was I doing?'"

"'What was I doing believing that this person was invested in this way?' Which is a fantastically strong humiliation in the best sense..."

Says Sean Penn, who doesn't "feel that I have ever been loved."

Gender role reversal on a very old — and lame — scenario.

"A British woman is divorcing her hubby on grounds the erotic bestseller 'Fifty Shades of Grey' failed to get a rise out of his languishing libido."

Is Trump's bombshell old divorce papers of Michelle and Barack Obama?

That's what the Daily Mail is rumoring. Unless there is a revelation of some significant misbehavior, this isn't big at all. It mainly makes Trump look small. And it's not helpful to Romney's cause for Trump to claim the spotlight, in the last 2 weeks of the campaign, over this.

Who cares about the internal workings of a political marriage? I always assume there's some phony PR to it. But the fact is they are together, they've played the public role of married couple, and they have 2 very real little girls who don't deserve to be hurt. And because of that, Trump's news, if this is what it is, will only make moderate, middle-of-the road voters feel compassion for Obama.

Trump should crawl back into his hole right now, before he does any damage.

Is there some rule that says you can't get engaged while still married?

You broke up with your wife 2 years ago. You're on the path toward divorce. The legalities aren't tied up. Can't you promise to marry the new woman in your life? What's the morality problem— beyond the basic moral problem of divorce?

Looking at the pictures of Dinesh D'Sousa and Denise Joseph, I can't help suspecting that some people are bridling at the difference in age, beauty, and — perhaps — race.

D'Souza resigns from the presidency of King's College over the issue of having a fiancée before his divorce is final.

Weird. Did they drum him out of there or is he better off without them?

According to several sources at the college, members of the King’s faculty and board alike had grown hostile to D’Souza’s presidency over what they saw as a failure to earn his reported million-dollar salary. D’Souza has spent much of the past few months promoting his documentary, 2016: Obama’s America, and his high profile in the media was seen as rarely benefitting the college.

Embarrassing divorces. Does anyone really care? Didn't they mostly only want his name? If so, if the name stopped meaning what they wanted it to mean, it's time to cut off the million-dollar salary. Move on.

"Along with her new Catholic school, the 6-year-old daughter of Katie and ex-husband Tom Cruise will have a uniform..."

"... when she's in school, and 'normal kid' clothes when she's out and about."

This is the 6-year-old "fashionista" with $3.2 million worth of designer clothes and custom-made shoes.

Previously, the child was home-schooled within a Scientology milieu.

"[M]ost divorced people identify the same top five regrets...."

Which translates into these 5 points of advice:

Boost your spouse's mood....

Talk more about money....

Get over the past....

Blame the relationship. The divorced individuals in the study who blamed ex-spouses, or even themselves, had more anxiety, depression and sleep disorders than individuals who blamed the way that they and their partners interacted....

Reveal more about yourself....

"I am not for or against living together, but I am for young adults knowing that, far from safeguarding against divorce and unhappiness..."

"... moving in with someone can increase your chances of making a mistake — or of spending too much time on a mistake."

"Divorce is immature and selfish. Don't do it."

Says Penelope Trunk (who got divorced 4 years ago). I — who got divorced 22 years ago — agree with her. (Except to the extent that her pronouncement is phrased in absolute terms, which I doubt she believes. And not everyone who experiences divorce can be said to "do" it. It can be done to you.)

1. Divorce is a cliche among people in denial....

2. Divorce is nearly always terrible for kids. Your case is not the exception....

3. Divorce is for dumb people....

4. Divorce reflects mental illness....

5. Divorce is often a career issue....

Bullet points fleshed out at the link.

"A 99-year-old Italian man is divorcing his wife of 77 years after he stumbled across letters she had written to a secret lover in the 1940s."

"The 96-year-old woman, identified in court papers as Rosa C., reportedly confessed to having an affair 60 years ago, and then tried desperately to persuade her hubby to stay.... Once the divorce is finalized, the pair could take the record for world’s oldest divorcees."

"What is it Gingrich is afraid his wife of 18 years is going to remember incorrectly?"

"And what could be so bad that it would eclipse all that many Christian conservatives have already forgiven and forgotten about his history?"

We already have Marianne Gingrich's 2010 interview with Esquire. WaPo's Melinda Henneberger summarizes them:

1. Newt actually started seeing his geometry teacher, the first Mrs. Newt Gingrich, when he was only 16....

2. Early in their marriage, she had to take over the budget "because it was too stressful for Newt."...

3. ... "You know what he hated most?” Marianne says. “When they talked about him being fat. That weight thing was personal."...

4. That after his Congressional career ended in scandal, he pretty much fell apart: "There were times... when he wasn’t functioning. He started yelling at people, which he’d never done before, and he’d get weirdly ‘overfocused’ on getting things done — manic, as if he was running out of time. He took to taking meetings while eating, slurping his food, as if he wasn’t aware or didn’t care how strange it looked."...

5. That he has lost his way and wants more than anything a lifestyle that’s “opulent” or “self-indulgent.”...

6. That he begged her to “tolerate” his affair with Callista, his third and current wife....

7. That his conversion to Catholicism "has no meaning."...

8. That he might go ahead and run for president anyway, because "he doesn’t connect things like normal people."

I've elided Henneberger's sloughing off of each of these items. She thinks Marianne will have to come up with something new and worse to destroy Newt. But I'm not so sure. Who bothered with the Esquire article back in 2010? The point is to throw this stuff right in our face now, when we're excited about judging Newt. To see the ex-wife's face as she lets this stuff out... it's titillating. We'll pay attention. We'll make clips of the juiciest seconds. The experience of receiving the tidbits will be entirely different. They don't have to be new tidbits to feel vividly new. Picture it.

Now, picture Mitt, a man with a spotless personal life. (And by "spotless," I don't mean to cause you to start thinking about that dog again. The worst thing he's ever done seems to be to have transported and cleaned his dog in a way that he believed was good but was probably not.)

"We spent a lot of time asking ourselves, 'What is the purpose of a sofa?'"

Malcolm Gladwell quotes Walter Isaacson quoting Laurene Powell quoting her husband Steve Jobs.

Powell lived with her fabulously wealthy husband in a house often mostly devoid of furniture, because he didn't want his space infiltrated with anything he didn't feel perfectly sure of.

It would be hard to get fabulously wealthy if all consumers were so resistant to purchasing, but it might be a good attitude for individual consumers to adopt. Especially if you live alone. It's great to appreciate the open, uncluttered space you have and to save your money. But if you live with someone else, she'd better share or at least love that attitude, because if those empty spaces are perceived as deprivations, it's going to hurt — especially if she breaks away and taps into that pile of money you kept instead of blowing on upholstered merchandise.

And then there's the pristine space that is the inside of your body. You can be very fussy about what you let in there, and you can wait and wait until your sure it's exactly right, and then what? From the Isaacson biography:

To the horror of his friends and wife, Jobs decided not to have surgery to remove the tumor, which was the only accepted medical approach. “I really didn’t want them to open up my body...” he told me years later with a hint of regret....

“The big thing was that he really was not ready to open his body,” Powell recalled. “It’s hard to push someone to do that.”

I love the default position of doing nothing. First, do no harm. That's a fine aphorism. A saying I made up that I've relied on for decades and care about immensely is: Better than nothing is a high standard. But it's not such a high standard that it's only beaten by perfection. Perfect is the enemy of good. Now, there's a great saying. Get the cancer surgery that saves your life. And if your wife wants a sofa and she can't explain exactly why... you'd better think about it. Empty space can get really empty.

Married in 2004, they renewed their vows in 2008 and in 2010, and now they're getting divorced.

What's really going on behind the scenes with couples who renew their vows?

The couple described in the post title consists of the most beautiful woman in the world (according to People magazine) and a man who isn't even average-looking but was previously married to a Miss Universe. That man had a whole big number on the finale of "American Idol" this year which he only had because he is married to the woman he is now divorcing.

"But a marriage is between two people and – this is going to come as a shock to some women..."

" ... you’re not in it."

Should people who don't know Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin talk about their marriage?
	No. A marriage exists within a sacred closed circle of 2.
	No. We don't know enough to have an intelligent opinion.
	No. Leaving them alone will help them avoid divorce and divorce is bad for society.
	Yes. It's an interesting subject to speculate about even without full information.
	Yes. A spouse needs to hear from others in order to make good decisions.
	Yes. A marriage is intermeshed with society and that makes a high-profile marriage a public issue.
pollcode.com free polls

Where's Huma Abedin? What should she do?

The Daily News headlines: "Huma Abedin is notably absent from husband Anthony Weiner's tearful sexting confession."

Huma Abedin wasn't standing by her man....

A top aide to Secretary of State Clinton, Abedin issued no statements of support for her embattled husband. She was a no-show Monday at two public State Department events.

"I love my wife very much, and we have no intention of splitting up over this," Weiner insisted. "I love her very much, and she loves me."

No intention of splitting up over this. Those last 2 words jumped out at me.

Several political pros cheered her absence yesterday.

"In general, it's very difficult for women constituents to look at the grieving wife up there," said Democratic consultant George Arzt. "It's bad PR."

The better move for Weiner, Arzt said, was "to look like he can take it all by himself and stand up there."

University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato took to Twitter with a similar view: "At least Weiner didn't make his wife come out and gaze lovingly at him."

Ha ha. He's a PR expert! He's not advising Weiner in advance. He's dealing with the facts he's stuck with. This is what the PR man says when the wife isn't there. What did the Democratic consultants say when Silda Spitzer stood by her man?

The New York Post headlines: "Weiner & wife worlds apart/:Snake slithers when Huma is globetrotting with Hill."

As the "body woman" to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Huma Abedin is tasked with accompanying the former first lady on diplomatic globetrotting missions.

Weiner, it seems, uses the timing of her foreign affairs to pursue domestic ones online.

For instance, last month, while Abedin and Clinton were in Rome meeting with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Weiner was chatting up Texas nursing student Meagan Broussard.

I wonder what conversations Huma is having with Hillary — the world's most famous stander by of her man.

The political power couple met while Abedin was on the campaign trail during Clinton's 2008 White House bid. By 2009, they were engaged....

Didn't Abedin know the kind of man she was marrying? He was 45, and had never married previously. As Hillary's close assistant, she had to be sophisticated about the ways of oversexed, extroverted, narcissistic husbands. What was the marriage supposed to be, anyway? They were conspicuously a glamorous "power couple," for public purposes, but what was he allowed to do in private? What were their understandings? At the press conference yesterday, Weiner said that she asked how he could be so dumb, which made me think what mattered most was that people found out and she was shamed and embarrassed. Was it the public image that mattered, or was it to be a loyal, deeply bonded marriage in private?

Unlike Bill and Hillary, Weiner and Abedin have only been married a year, and they have no children. And the husband's career is deeply compromised at this point. They're not going to become the Democratic Party's next Bill and Hillary. The glamorous power couple is defunct. What happens to the private Tony and Huma?

Will Abedin divorce Weiner?
	Yes.
	No, she'll stand by her man.
	Divorce? She should be able to get an annulment!
pollcode.com free polls

Let's talk about morality.

America has a strong consensus about a lot things even as we are divided on others:



What surprises you the most here? Are you surprised that 80% of Americans say suicide is morally wrong? I've often had to struggle with commenters on this blog when I have taken the firm position that suicide is murder, but I think America mostly agrees with me. There is generally an outpouring of sympathy when someone commits suicide. Why don't we express our moral opprobrium toward the self-murderer? I think it's because that person is gone, and we feel sorry for those who are left behind. They are the victims.

Doctor-assisted suicide is an important subcategory of suicide, and the Gallup report says that it "emerges as the most controversial cultural issue in Gallup's 2011 Values and Beliefs poll." But what is notable is that support for assisted suicide has been dropping and has reached its lowest level of support in 8 years.

"I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring."

Said Richard Feynman, who died in 1988, at the age of 69. There's a new book about his life, which was marked by the death of this first wife, who died after only 2 years of marriage:

Feynman was stricken and turned, as some kind of compensation, to the predatory pursuit of women – dating undergraduates, visiting prostitutes, and sleeping with the young wives of several colleagues while an academic at Cornell University.

At the age of 31, having never ventured outside the United States, he visited Rio de Janeiro, where he lectured at the Centro Brasiliero de Pesquisas Friscas during the day. In the evening, he played drums for a samba band or picked up women – he particularly liked air stewardesses – in the bar of the Miramar Palace hotel.

He was eventually snared by Mary Louise Bell – "a platinum blonde with a penchant for high heels and tight clothes," according to Lawrence Krauss. They married in 1952 and divorced shortly afterwards. "He begins working calculus problems in his head as soon as he awakens," Bell complained to a divorce judge. "He did calculus while driving, while sitting in the living room and while lying in bed at night."

He also did calculations "while sitting at the strip bars [which he] visited because he claimed they helped him concentrate."

The topic is: the intersection of death, sex, and math. Discuss.

"Gotta be careful what goes on line pookies... The ex would love to fry me with that."

Written on a blog by a woman who subsequently lost the monthly $850 she'd been receiving after she testified that she was too disabled to work. The woman, Dorothy McGurk, had been blogging about belly dancing:

"My belly dancing is the reason why I adore myself so much."

The ex, it should be noted, is a mailman.