Good Golly, Don't Miss Molly: Ivins' Book Published Posthumously This Week

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Good Golly, Don't Miss Molly: Ivins' Book Published Posthumously This Week

By E&P Staff

Published: November 02, 2007 10:20 AM ET

NEW YORK Molly Ivins, the legendary Texas columnist (by way of The New York Times and other newspapers), passed away earlier this year but her prose lives on in a book published this week. It's titled, "Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights," completed with the assistance of her longtime collaborator and in this case, co-author, Lou Dubose.

It's published by Random House. The publisher's write-up follows.
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Throughout her long career of “afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted,” the cause closest to Molly Ivins’s heart was working to protect the freedoms we all value. Sadly, today we’re living in a time when dissent is equated with giving aid to terrorists, when any of us can be held in prison without even knowing the charges against us, and when our constitutional rights are being interpreted by a president who calls himself “The Decider.”

Ivins got the idea for Bill of Wrongs while touring America to honor her promise to speak out, gratis, at least once a month in defense of free speech. In her travels Ivins met ordinary people going to extraordinary measures to safeguard our most precious liberties, and when she first started writing this book, she intended it to be a joyous celebration of those heroes. But during the Bush years, the project’s focus changed. Ivins became concerned about threats to our cherished freedoms–among them the Patriot Act and the weakening of habeas corpus–and she observed with anger how dissent in the defense of liberties was being characterized as treason by the Bush administration and its enablers.

From illegal wiretaps, the unlawful imprisonment of American citizens, and the undermining of freedom of the press to the creeping influence of religious extremism on our national agenda and the erosion of the checks and balances that prevent a president from seizing unitary powers, Ivins and her longtime collaborator, Lou Dubose, co-author of Shrub and Bushwacked, describe the attack on America’s vital constitutional guarantees. With devastating humor and keen eyes for deceit and hypocrisy, they show how severe these incursions have become, and they ask us all to take an active role in protecting the Bill of Rights.

In life and on the printed page, Molly Ivins was too cool to offer a posthumous valedictory (or even to take a victory lap for her many triumphs over inane, vainglorious, and addlepated politicos). But in Bill of Wrongs, her final and perhaps greatest book, the irrepressible Molly Ivins really does have the last word.

now I still can't wait to get it, but it's going to make me so sad when I go to the bookstore.

:cry:

:cry:

Good Lord, his performance as governor is being mirrored now--all the same ol' cronies, all the pandering to his wealthy base, all the lip service to the RRR--and our dear, good Molly called it all years ago.

Damn, she was good. When people ask this librarian what to read to find out if GWB was as bad as they say, I need only point to Molly Ivins and John Dean.

And in this house, we often use things now, wrap for show later.

Molly was the best and it will be a long time before the world sees the likes of her again.

It's not a very long book, but I can't read more than about a chapter a night before my heart starts to break, both for my country and for Molly--I miss her so much.

It's a great book--and, just like Molly always did, it breaks it down into terms and situations you can understand. I recommend it highly.

Lou Dubose should be thanked for finishing this book and giving us this last gift from Molly.