Good Woman Down

Godammit we've lost one of the great ones. Molly Ivins, the syndicated columnist from Texas, hysterically funny, sharp-witted and liberal as they come, a Smithie and Texan to the core, unafraid of politicans or cancer, is dead at 62. Some samples of the syndicated columnist's words, courtesy of the Houston Chronicle. Molly, if I have just a bit of your wit, an ounce of your savvy, a dollop of your way with words, I will die happy. I hope you did too.

—"I'm sorry to say (cancer) can kill you but it doesn't make you a better person," she told the San Antonio Express-News in September 2006, the same month cancer claimed her friend former Gov. Ann Richards.

— "If you think his daddy had trouble with 'the vision thing,' wait'll you meet this one," Ivins on George W. Bush in "The Progressive," June 1999.

— "The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy," from a July 2006 column urging commentator Bill Moyers to run for president.

— "Many people did not care for Pat Buchanan's speech; it probably sounded better in the original German," Ivins in September 1992, commenting on the one-time presidential hopeful's speech to the Republican National Convention.

— "....our very own dreaded Legislature is almost upon us. Jan. 9 and they'll all be here, leaving many a village without its idiot," from a December 2000 column.