Edmund H. Mahony and Jon Lender of the the Hartford Courant report on Sen. Christopher Dodd’s wife:

Since the low-profile family wedding on a rise above the Connecticut River in 1999, Jackie M. Clegg Dodd’s income has quadrupled to the mid-six-figure range. All of the increase is due to her appointment as a highly compensated member of multiple corporate boards of directors.

Clegg Dodd, a former legislative aide and senior federal Export-Import Bank officer, was compensated at a rate of about $500,000 a year in 2007 and 2008 from seats on five corporate boards, according to the most recent filings by the companies to the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.

The first thing I think is: How many other congressional spouses have been added to boards of public and closely-held companies as their elected halves enter Congress or move up in the hierarchy? I’m guessing Dodd’s wife isn’t the only spouse so situated.