This can be filed under “Well, that’s not really a surprise” category.

Terry Mahoney, wife of Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fla.) has filed for divorce, according to the Palm Beach Post. — Politico

Silda and Eliot Spitzer on a Very Bad Day. Nonetheless, they just celebrated their 21st wedding anniversary.

You’d certainly THINK it wouldn’t be a surprise. But actually, this is one of the very few incidences I can remember when the aggrieved wife sent the no-goodnik packing.

Hillary Clinton? Nope. Silda Spitzer? Nope. Suzanne Craig? Nope. And on and on and on — Joe lists some of the others here.

They have their horrible press conferences where they stand to the side and look miserable and humiliated (is this really necessary? can’t the guy just apologize on his own?) and yet they STAY. Why?

That's Terry under Tim's armpit. Surprisingly hard to find a photo of her -- every one I've found has Tim front and center and then she's blurrily off in a corner somewhere. Foreshadowing, anyone?

Maybe the wives of politicians have already resigned themselves to the possibility of their husbands fooling around — certainly seems to be an occupational hazard. Maybe the kind of people who would put up with a politician husband at all are the ones who are especially attached to the perks — and especially averse to losing those perks by divorcing. Maybe politicians are better than other people at convincing their wives to stick around once they mess up — all that public speaking helps, ya know? (Unless of course they don’t want to stay married, like Rudy — then they convey the news in a press conference.) Maybe it’s not actually that unique to political couples — maybe it just seems that way, but in fact these couples stay together after misbehavior at about the same rate as non-political couples.

Who knows.

It’s awfully refreshing to see someone finally refuse to play the game, though. Good luck, Terry.

There must be something in the water in FLA-16, a water-bounded district that spans south central Florida from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico and that embraces the northeastern shore of Lake Okeechobee. Or perhaps it is the influence of the moon, or a peculiar alignment of the stars. Whatever it is, surely there is some mysterious power at work in these environs. How else is one to explain the bipartisan madness that affects its elected representatives to congress?

Rep. Tim Mahoney: "How YOU doin'?"

This is the district, after all, that elected Mark Foley to the House of Representatives. Foley, for those two or three benighted souls out there who have just returned from a lengthy Peace Corps mission to Burkina Fasso or who have been in a coma for the past two years, was the Republican congressman who resigned in disgrace on the eve of the 2006 mid-term election when it was revealed that he was exchanging sexually explicit instant messages with male congressional pages. Once the press published the messages, Foley suddenly remembered something very important that he had failed to mention to his constituents: that he was, in fact, gay and that he liked to send sexually explicit instant messages to congressional pages — not that there’s anything wrong with that. Well, actually there is, but Foley explained that the lurid IMs were the result of a drinking problem and the lingering after-effects of molestation at the hands of priest when Foley was an altar boy. That and presumably the whole homosexuality thing, I’m sure.