This is by John Nichols of the Capital Times:
Leaving the Times in 1982 was the best thing that ever happened to Ivins. She settled back in her home state of Texas, where her friend and Texas Observer magazine colleague Jim Hightower was about to get elected as agricultural commissioner and another friend named Ann Richards was striding toward the governorship. As a newspaper columnist for the old Dallas Times Herald - and, after that paper's demise, for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram - Ivins began writing a political column drenched in the good humor and fighting spirit of that populist moment. It appealed beyond Texas, and within a decade she was writing for 400 papers nationwide - including The Capital Times, with which she shared a long and warm relationship.
As it happened, the populist fires faded in Texas, and the state started spewing out the byproducts of an uglier political tradition - the oil-money plutocracy - in the form of George Bush and Dick Cheney.
It mattered, a lot, that Ivins was writing for papers around the country during the Bush interregnum. She explained to disbelieving Minnesotans and Mainers that, yes, these men really were as mean, as self-serving and as delusional as they seemed. The book that Ivins and her pal Lou Dubose wrote about their homeboy-in-chief, "Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush" (Random House, 2000), was the essential expose of the man the Supreme Court elected president. And Ivins' columns tore away any pretense of civility or citizenship erected by the likes of Karl Rove.
When Washington pundits started counseling bipartisanship after voters routed the Republicans in the 2006 elections, Molly wrote, "The sheer pleasure of getting lessons in etiquette from Karl Rove and the right-wing media passeth all understanding. Ever since 1994, the Republican Party has gone after Democrats with the frenzy of a foaming mad dog. There was the impeachment of Bill Clinton, not to mention the trashing of both Clinton and his wife - accused of everything from selling drugs to murder - all orchestrated by that paragon of manners, Tom DeLay. ... So after 12 years of tolerating lying, cheating and corruption, the press is prepared to lecture Democrats on how to behave with bipartisan manners.
"Given Bush's record with the truth, this bipartisanship sounds like a bad idea on its face," Ivins continued, in a column that warned any Democrat who might think to make nice with President Bush and his team that "These people are not only dishonest - they're not even smart."
