The Legislature provides us with an array of verbal treasures. During a debate on a bill to stop out-of-wedlock children from getting welfare, Bob Eckhardt said, "It is not so much the natural bastards I worry about as the self-made ones." Craig Washington, filibustering one of those idiot flag-burning amendments, said, "I prefer those who would burn the flag and keep the Constitution to those who would tear up the Constitution and keep the flag." After yet another unsuccessful effort to modify the Texas sodomy law, the authors of a successful amendment were slapping backs and high-fiving. A voice from the press box said, "Sergeant, you must go over and reprimand both those men. Because under the amendments just passed by them, it is now illegal for a prick to touch an asshole in this state." The annual Waring Blender Award for Mixed Metaphor is always appreciated, as in: "If you throw the baby out with the bathwater, it will let the head of the camel into the tent." Then there was the special time we were having Disability Day to honor the handicapped, and Speaker Gib Lewis said to those in the wheelchairs wedged up into the balcony, "And now, would y'all stand and be recognized?"

That's from Molly Ivins, who has passed away after a battle with cancer at the age of 62. Ivins was always a heroine of ours: she proved - if it needed proving - that a woman could be just as funny (if not funnier) than a man, that a Texas liberal could be just as tough (if not tougher) than a Texas conservative, and that a journalist could achieve a large modicum of fame and still remain committed to the small papers for which she started writing. There'll be a lot of talk in the next few days about her legacy as a liberal and her legacy as a woman, all of it deserved; we want to focus on her legacy as a writer. Sure, she got a little strident toward the end, but when she was in her prime (we have owned three copies of Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She? because we've thumbed through the first two so frequently that they've fallen apart) there was no one better. Whatever your political perspective, Ivins' writing was so distinctive that you couldn't help be charmed (much in the way liberals cannot deny the genius of Mencken, we know more than a few conservatives who disagreed with her politics but were unable to resist her prose). She is a voice that will truly be missed. Rest in peace, Molly.

Sometimes, You Just Have to Laugh

In Loving Memory of Molly Ivins, 1944-2007 [Texas Observer]

Molly Ivins, queen of liberal commentary, dies [Austin American-Statesman]