Questions from Molly Ivins

What happened to the nation that never tortured? The nation that wasn't supposed to start wars of choice? The nation that respected human rights and life? A nation that from the beginning was against tyranny?

Where have we gone? How did we let these people take us there? How did we let them fool us?

--Molly Ivins (from her last column)

Molly Ivins was among the first to warn us about George W. Bush. While he was still the death-warrant happy Governor of Texas, she co-authored (with Lou Dubose) Shrub: the Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush, and then, as we went to war, Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America.

Throughout the Bush presidency she reported plainly and with sharp humor on the true and sorry state of our union. One of her themes was the Bush regime's systematic support of the powerful against the powerless. The week of her passing, Robert Pear in The Times carried forth on her mission by reporting that Bush has signed an executive order to insert political operatives into federal regulatory agencies for the purpose of hampering their ability to regulate.

Mickeleh's Take: I'll miss her voice, her humor, and her record of seeing and saying what so many journalists were unable or unwilling to report about Bush. That more and more people now see Bush for what he is and what he does is due in no small measure to Molly Ivins.