I just read through the court file that exists from Mike McGavick's 1991 divorce. There's nothing there that is newsworthy, or even anything interesting. It looks just like many other divorce cases of far less prominent people. There's no story there for us.

The documents were obtained from the court in Bucks County, PA, by Times investigative reporter Susan Kelleher, who reviewed them carefully. What she saw was the original complaint and the final divorce decree. If there was ever anything other than that it doesn't exist in the records today.

It's unusual to mention things we look at that don't become news stories. But at least since McGavick called his divorce one of his "two great failures" there has been press and blogger interest in the GOP Senate candidate's divorce file. The curiosity was made greater because the file was kept private by court officials, as all divorce records are in Bucks County.

Or at least that used to the policy. After Kelleher's questions about accessing the records, court officials there told her that they were changing the decades-old policy of automatically making divorce files private unless one of the parties agreed to let them be seen. Officials there said the policy was in conflict with the state's open records law.