Free Republic

Since my name is Molly Ivins and I speak for myself, I’ll tell you exactly why I opposed invading Iraq: because I thought it would be bad for this country, our country, my country. I opposed the invasion out of patriotism, and that is the reason I continue to oppose it today — I think it is bad for us. I think it has done nothing but harm to the United States of America. I think we have created more terrorists than we faced to start with and that our good name has been sullied all over the world. I...

AS RILEY USED to say on an ancient television sitcom, "This is a revoltin' development." There seems to be a bit of a campaign on the right to blame Newsweek for the anti-American riots in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Islamic countries.Uh, people, I hate to tell you this, but the story about Americans abusing the Quran to enrage prisoners has been out there for quite some time.The first mention I found of it is March 17, 2004, when the Independent of London interviewed the first British citizen released from Guantanamo Bay.The prisoner said he had been physically beaten but did...

IN A SINGLE Sunday, the New York Times managed to call iPods unhip and denounce high school theater as a “refuge of nerds and spazzes.” Talk about having one’s finger on the pulse of pop culture. With the media in the doghouse according to mainstream America, is it really wise to insult Broadway and Apple in one day? I think we should all go Times Square and listen to “West Side Story,” freshly downloaded from iTunes, Apple’s online music store. That would send the Great Gray Lady straight “Into the Woods” for sure. We could protest all the way to...

With April 15 having just passed, the scars are still fresh. I hope you're not one who rejoiced over your tax refund as if the feds were presenting you with some kind of gift. Generally, if you're getting a refund check it's only because excessive taxes were withheld from your paychecks all year. What you'll be getting back is your own money, the return of principal on the interest-free loan you were kind enough to extend to the U.S. Treasury in 2004. Molly Ivins, the folksy, sassy socialist from Texas (by way of The New York Times, where she once...

There are substantial revisions to our lineup and schedule of syndicated national columnists: Six columnists from our current lineup - Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, Maureen Dowd, Leonard Pitts, David Broder and Ellen Goodman - are continuing, but their work will appear on different days of the week. We're adding five new columnists to the page - three conservative, two liberal - with an eye toward freshening up the mix and upgrading the quality of the writing and advocacy. Conservative Michael Barone, a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report and principal co-writer of the "Almanac of American Politics," has...

Now, you know you cannot keep a dog that kills chickens, no matter how fine a dog it is otherwise. Some people think you cannot break a dog that has got in the habit of killin' chickens, but my friend John Henry always claimed you could. He said the way to do it is to take one of the chickens the dog has killed and wire the thing around the dog's neck, good and strong. Leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so bad that no other dog or person will even go near that poor beast. The thing'll...

Ivins writes: Do you know how to cure a chicken-killin' dog? Now, you know you cannot keep a dog that kills chickens, no matter how fine a dog it is otherwise. Some people think you cannot break a dog that has got in the habit of killin' chickens, but my friend John Henry always claimed you could. He said the way to do it is to take one of the chickens the dog has killed and wire the thing around the dog's neck, good and strong.

Austin "FOR A WHILE I thought about moving to Atlanta," Jeff Lewis was saying, "but then I realized the Austin connection, being here, gives us a kind of special edge, and we really, really didn't want to lose that sort of, I don't know, allure. I mean, other people do what we do, but we're here, right in this man's backyard." Jeff is barefoot and ear-ringed and prefers black--today it's black jeans under a flyaway black linen shirt, unbuttoned to the sternum. With his business partner Bill Callan, he is founder of "Two Unemployed Democrats Co." an Internet and mail-order...

BOSTON -- OK, here's my brilliant Insider Insight du jour: The D's aren't going to get much of a bounce out of this convention because this race is already so tight there just ain't enough swing votes to bounce anywhere.

MUCH HAS BEEN made of the Republican National Committee’s decision to showcase the moderate wing of the party from the stage at Madison Square Garden this week. Hence speeches by Senator John McCain and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani on Monday night, and by California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday. And no invocation by Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, or Pat Robertson. The president, understandably, wants to avoid a Pat Buchanan–esque moment of the sort that marred his father’s convention in 1992. (Buchanan’s prime-time rant about the "culture war" was so extreme that Molly Ivins quipped it was better in...

Well! If you have never seen a flock of enraged birders, you don't know what danger is. These people don't just watch pewits and tweety-birds, they're into raptors, too falcons, eagles ... they know how to swoop and strike. If we find Rove beaten to a pulp with binoculars, it will be no surprise. How could he ignore the immemorial warning, "Beware the wrath of the birding legions!' Back to business. There's no way to keep up with the Bush administration's assaults on the environment, they're just endless. Most notable lately was the decision to let mercury pollution, which is...

New York, California, Texas, and 28 other states considered 'out of play' for 2004 election; will be spared most of ad barrageAUSTIN, Texas – Strange peaches. All of us out here in the boonies should be aware this is a truly weird political year. For one thing, nobody has ever seen this much money involved. What can $200 million do in a political race, answered, we presume, by at least $100 million by the Democrats? No one knows. And now brace yourselves for the really bad news. All this money, intensity and advertising are not going to be spread out...

AUSTIN, Texas — Living proof that the Democrats haven't gotten any smarter since the last time they ran a candidate for president. Much huffing (and a huffy Democrat is a terrifying sight) over the fact that George W. Bush used images of 9-11 and of the firefighters at Ground Zero to tout his candidacy in his first campaign ad. How crass, said the D's. Exploiting a national tragedy for political purposes — oh, how tacky. Dammit, the problem is not that the ad is in bad taste, the problem is that Bush screwed the firefighters in a famous case of...

AUSTIN, Texas -- So the Democrats have a candidate at last, and he is about bent over double with gravitas. I think that means he doesn't a have humorous bone in his body. It's a good thing there's at least one serious person in this race -- the Bushies are getting sillier and sillier. Just when you thought no one could top Rod Paige calling the teacher's union "a terrorist organization," along comes Veep Cheney with this gem, "If Democratic policies had been pursued over the last two-to-three years, the kind of tax increases both Kerry and Edwards are talking...

A few days ago, a Respected Party Elder advised me to stop dissing John Kerry on account of, ''He will be our nominee.'' He may be ''our nominee,'' but he'll still be a boring stiff. OK, sort of an impressive boring stiff. So far, this is a swell race, and we're in for another terrific week if both Kerry and John Edwards do the issue stuff they're both well-placed to do. Kerry has a strong, well-thought-out healthcare plan, and he should make it his signature issue -- and put some passion into it, if he's got any. Edwards, with his...

Molly Ivins No cheering for this state government SYNDICATED COLUMNIST Friday, January 9, 2004 Sigh. I just hate when Tom DeLay and Karl Rove get away with a dirty deal like this. The University of Texas is now represented by Lamar Smith of San Antonio, I'm in a district that runs to the Mexican border, and two blocks north of me, they're in with Houston. As one who relishes our state's bizarre political mores, I must confess I love the sheer awfulness of this map. It is awesome and worthy of the noble tradition of lunacy for which Texas is...

In order to understand why George W. Bush doesn't get it, you have to take several strands of common Texas attitude, then add an impressive degree of class-based obliviousness. What you end up with is a guy who sees himself as a perfectly nice fellow -- and who is genuinely disconnected from the impact of his decisions on people. On the few occasions when Bush does directly encounter the down-and-out, he seems to empathize. But then, in what is becoming a recurring, almost nightmare-type scenario, the minute he visits some constructive program and praises it (AmeriCorps, the Boys and Girls...

Three best-selling liberal authors have come up with a clever tactic: Use humor to shield hate, cynicism, and unsupported accusations. Those who object just don't "get the joke." Al Franken calls Karl Rove "human filth," Ari Fleischer a "chimp," and John Ashcroft "something of a nutcase." Michael Moore calls President Bush a "nitwit" and (in the voice of God, no less) a "devil." Molly Ivins manages to insult millions at once when she approvingly quotes William Brann's crack that "the trouble with our Texas Baptists is that we do not hold them under water long enough." Mean-spirited, you say? No,...

Posted on Sun, Aug. 10, 2003 Mileposts on the road to societal ruin By Molly Ivins Creators Syndicate Star-Telegram Molly Ivins CAMDEN, Maine - Let us stop to observe a few mileposts on the downward path to the utter degradation of political discourse in this country. A recent newspaper advertising campaign by "independent" groups supporting President Bush shows a closed courtroom door with the sign "Catholics Need Not Apply" hanging on it. The ad argues that William Pryor Jr., attorney general of Alabama and a right-wing, anti-abortion nominee to the federal appeals court, is under attack for his "deeply held"...

My, my, my, the great Iraqi Gold Rush is on, and who should be there at the front of the line, right along with Halliburton and Bechtel, but our old friends at WorldCom -- perpetrator of the largest accounting fraud in American history. WorldCom, shortly to become MCI, has been given a contract worth $45 million in the short term to build a wireless phone network in Iraq. I learned via The Associated Press that Washington Technology, a trade newspaper that follows computing-related sales to the U.S. government, "found WorldCom jumped to eighth among all federal technology contractors in 2002,...