"She was magical in her writing," said Mike Blackman, a former Star-Telegram executive editor who hired Ms. Ivins at the newspaper’s Austin bureau in 1992, a few months after the Times-Herald ceased publication. "She could turn a phrase in such a way that a pretty hard-hitting point didn’t hurt so bad."

A California native who moved to Houston as a young child with her family, Ms. Ivins was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999. Two years later after enduring a radical mastectomy and rounds of chemotherapy, Ms. Ivins was given a 70 percent chance of remaining cancer-free for five years. At the time, she said she liked the odds.

But the cancer recurred in 2003, and again last year. In recent weeks, she had suspended her twice-weekly syndicated column, allowing guest writers to use the space while she underwent further treatment. She made a brief return to writing in mid-January, urging readers to resist President Bush’s plan to increase the number of U.S. troops deployed to Iraq. She likened her call to an old-fashioned "newspaper crusade."

"We are the people who run this country," Ms Ivins said in the column published in the Jan. 14 edition of the Star-Telegram. "We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war.

"Raise hell," she continued. "Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them and are trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge."

She ended the piece by endorsing the peace march in Washington scheduled for Saturday. 01-27 "We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!' " she wrote.

If you ever read Molly, you knew she was funny, sassy and full of life. From her writing alone I could discern these character traits. By all accounts, how she presented herself in print was also how she appeared in person. A fighter? Yes. Tough? Yes. And also a great advocate for progressive causes, not just in America but around the world.

Evidence of that can be seen in the fact that on her death bed she was supporting the anti-war demonstrations last weekend and calling for more of them. She believed passionately that America and Americans could be a positive force for good in the world, a force for advancing human rights, freedom and simple human decency. The Bush lies and deceits that led us into Iraq offended her greatly because she believed a great nation is not founded upon the victories it achieves in war (and especially not in a war of aggression that served no one's interests but a few multinational companies such as Halliburton and Exxon), but upon the principles it stands for and promotes, principles like peace, justice and equality for all peoples on this planet we call Earth. She was to coin a phrase, a peace monger. I mourn her passing.

But I also take to heart her last message to us: We are the deciders. We showed that in November 2006. Let's keep showing it now.

So all or write your Congressional members every day. Write letters to the editor of your local newspapers. Do whatever you can to advance the causes you hold dear, that matter to you, whether they be forestalling another tragic war with Iran, ending the war in Iraq, universal health care, global warming, helping the people of the Gulf coast who were victimized by Hurricane Katrina and by the inadequacy of the Bush administration’s response, protecting our civil liberties, fairness in media, promoting legislation to help end prejudice and bigotry, and promote tolerance of all the diverse peoples who make up this country of ours: Male, Female, White, Black, Latino, Asian, Native American, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Gay, Lesbian, Transgendered or Heterosexual. Whatever your cause, make the decision to do something to bring it about.

Because we are the deciders. We can decide to do nothing out of apathy or fear, or we can decide to take action, motivated not by anger or hatred of those who have despoiled this great nation, but by the truest love one can show for our country and our fellow citizens, a love that calls for each of us to do whatever it takes to make America a better place for all who live here.

That's what Molly Ivins was really trying to tell us when she said we were the deciders. I can't think of a better message for her to have left us, can you?

(cont. with a postscript below the fold)