With the confidence of a captain of the girls' basketball team, Sarah Palin swished her way into the office of Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, took a jump shot at being Governor of Alaska, and then slam dunked the nomination for the Republican vice presidency.

Along the way, she’s accomplished a feat that often sidelines powerful women. Throughout her impressive career, she has never made her husband look diminished.

How she has dribbled her way around this challenging issue is a subject truly worthy of debate. After all, studies in Social Forces and The Journal of Marriage and Family say that women who are more successful than their husbands have higher divorce rates.

Many powerful women have come forward to admit that their careers have sent their relationships to the bench, including Pink and Reese Witherspoon. Amy Adams in this month’s Vanity Fair says she’s looking for a guy who won’t look at her success as his failure.

Sarah Palin, however, seems blissfully unvexed. Using her arsenal of charm like a lethal weapon, she is showing America that you can be powerful and sexy at the same time. And you can keep your studmuffin by your side, looking happy.

Hillary Clinton, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel — none of these women’s relationships with their husbands conveyed much marital heat in public. The husbands were more likely to get their wives into hot water, or have been so lukewarm, no one paid any attention to them.

Now we have Todd Palin, the hot political hubby.

At campaign stops, Todd Palin looks macho while doing nothing more than standing there holding their baby.

Gov. Sarah Palin may be not be getting a wink of sleep now that an Alaska state judge allowed a probe to go forward into whether she abused her power. The Republican vice presidential nominee is under fire for pressuring Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan to fire her ex brother-in-law, a state trooper.

The charges are that pressure to fire the trooper came from the Governor herself, her husband, Todd, and her staff. After Monegan did not agree, she fired him, citing disagreement over budget cuts.

And to her, that's a heck of a good reason and why should it be questioned otherwise?

On Thursday Judge Peter Michalski threw out the lawsuit filed by five Republican state legislators who claimed that Palin was the victim of an unfair partisan probe. The Republicans appear to be worried that a damaging report may surface before Election Day and affect voters. Or at least the kind of voters who vote based on performance.

The attorney for the five state legislators, Kevin Clarkson, claimed that the body that ordered the investigation had exceeded its authority.

But Michalski agreed with defense attorney Peter Maassen, who argued that the Legislature has broad authority to investigate the governor. The mere appearance of impropriety does not mean any individual's right to fairness was violated, Michalski wrote in his decision.

“It is legitimately within the scope of the legislature's investigatory power to inquire into the circumstances surrounding the termination (of) a public officer the legislature had previously confirmed,” the judge wrote.

Now, on the surface, it doesn't sound like she's really doling out any earth-shattering revelations. But she has a lot of common sense tips she can offer about everything from financial management and the legal process to post-divorce privacy issues. In fact, she even goes by an alias — Samantha Woods.

Apparently her divorce was messy and expensive, so she's got a pretty good idea of the worst of what you might encounter. She doesn't want her ex knowing what she's doing now with her consulting business, hence the pseudonym. In the digital age, that's actually something a lot of people might be interested in. If you don't want your ex finding you or tracking your activities, there are steps you can take.

But to me, the most encouraging thing about Woods is the example she sets for what your life can be like after your divorce. We talk a lot here at FWW about the various phases of divorce, and you get a pretty clear picture of that when you look at Woods. She had a phase of her life when she was married at a young age and raised kids. Then she had a phase where she navigated the breakup of her marriage. And now her marriage is over and she's become an entrepreneur.

It's nice to see an example proving things can change for the better during and after a divorce, even if it's tough to see the forest through the trees at the time.

Click here for more.