What drove LeAnn Rimes and husband apart?

When the news broke that LeAnn Rimes and Dean Sheremet had separated — just four months after the singer was reportedly caught in an affair with actor Eddie Cibrian — it saddened many friends who had admired their marriage and what they did for each other over the past seven years. In Nashville, those who knew the couple recall how the pair never seemed to spend a moment apart. Says one friend, “[LeAnn and Dean] were pretty much inseparable here.” The pair were often spotted together at the gym, dining on the town with friends, dancing at nightclubs and even shopping for Rimes’s wardrobe

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Kmart’s Christmas in July: Inspiration or Desperation?

During these dog days of summer, the nation’s department stores are still cold. According to the retail-sales statistics released by the Commerce Department on July 14, June department store sales dipped 1.3% compared to sales in May of this year, and were down 9.4% compared with June of 2008

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Massachusetts sues federal government over marriage law

Massachusetts sued the U.S. government on Wednesday, challenging the constitutionality of a federal law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman. “We’re taking this action today because, first, we believe that [the Defense of Marriage Act] directly interferes with Massachusetts’ long-standing sovereign authority to define and regulate the marital status of its residents,” Attorney General Martha Coakley said Wednesday afternoon

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Yes, I Suck: Self-Help Through Negative Thinking

In the last 50 years, people with mental problems have spent untold millions of hours in therapists’ offices, and millions more reading self-help books, trying to turn negative thoughts like “I never do anything right” into positive ones: “I can succeed.” For many people — including well-educated, highly trained therapists, for whom “cognitive restructuring” is a central goal — the very definition of psychotherapy is the process of changing self-defeating attitudes into constructive ones. But was Norman Vincent Peale right Is there power in positive thinking A study just published in the journal Psychological Science says trying to get people to think more positively can actually have the opposite effect: it can simply highlight how unhappy they are

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Why Sarah Palin Quit: The Five Best Explanations

When Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced her intention to resign on July 3, many assumed there must be a looming scandal. Why else make the surprise announcement late in the afternoon before the July 4 holiday — the equivalent of a news black hole — in tones that varied from angry to anxious?

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