Final Book From Molly Ivins Released Posthumously

[Hissyspit]

http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/830

Molly Ivins' Last Book (Just Released Posthumously) "Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights" (Hardcover)
By Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose



BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

From Random House, the Publisher of Molly Ivins' last book, ""Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights":

"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."

From Publishers Weekly:

The threats to the Bill of Rights cited by the late populist gadfly Ivins and Texas journalist Dubose (coauthors of Bushwhacked) in this scattershot survey run the gamut from physical to political violations. Dire indeed were the infringements of rights endured by Murat Kurnaz, an innocent German Muslim of Turkish descent held as an enemy combatant by the U.S. military for five years and subjected to waterboarding and electroshock. The Dover, Pa., school board's effort to insinuate intelligent design into biology courses has been much covered, though perhaps less bluntly than here (the defense lawyers just weren't as smart as those for the plaintiffs).

As for the Second Amendment, the authors castigate President Bush for being too protective of the right to bear arms. In between there are mentions of journalists jailed for shielding sources, librarians gagged by Kafkaesque government secrecy rules and a slew of citizens arrested for peaceably protesting in the vicinity of the president. (Many of these cases were quickly resolved once the ACLU got involved.) If, as Ivins and Dubose hint, there's a concerted assault on our freedoms, there 's still plenty of ineptitude: in one instance they cite, the feds accidentally sent top secret records of illegal electronic surveillance of suspected terrorists to the suspects' lawyers.

From an online reviewer:

1: The Bush administration has fed the Bill of Rights into a shredder.
Molly Ivins is one of my heroes; I mourned her death. I believe she saw politics clearly, but even if I didn't, her writing was so lively her books could be read for the pleasure of it alone.

MORE

[ixion]

1. The national dialog hasn't been quite the same since Molly left

I miss her everyday.

[malaise]

2. Thanks for this

I'm ordering right now.

[w8liftinglady]

3. me,too

[UTUSN]

4. K&R big #5. If only the rest of the media had taken Molly's homework and run with it in 2000!!1 n/t

[w8liftinglady]

5. here's the link on amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Wrongs-Executive-Americas-Fundamental/dp/1400062861/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-0017115-3731616?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194100811&sr=8-1

[w8liftinglady]

6. you might consider throwing Thom Hartmann's new book in with it for free shipping

http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Code-Restore-Americas-Original/dp/1576754588/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-0017115-3731616?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194100880&sr=1-1
Cracking the Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America's Original Vision (Hardcover)
Millions of working Americans talk, act, and vote as if their economic interests match those of the megawealthy, global corporations, and the politicians who do their bidding. How did this happen? According to Air America radio host Thom Hartmann, the apologists of the Right have become masters of the subtle and largely subconscious aspects of political communication. It's not an escalation in Iraq, it's a surge; it's not the inheritance tax, it's the death tax; it's not drilling for oil, it's exploring for energy. Conservatives didn't intuit the path to persuasive messaging; they learned these techniques. There is no reason why progressives can't learn them too. In Cracking the Code, Hartmann shows you how. Drawing on his background as a psychotherapist and advertising executive as well as a national radio host, he breaks down the structure for effective communication, sharing exercises and examples for practical application

[Lugnut]

7. K&R n/t

[G_Leo_Criley]

8. k & r and thanks!

What a wonderful presence in our lives Molly was.

Thanks hissyspit for posting this!

glc

[yowzayowzayowza]

9. I miss Molly.

k&r

[Hekate]

10. That book is a must-have, for sure. Ye gods I miss Molly. nt

[WillyT]

11. Thanks For The Heads-Up !!!

:kick:

[Cha]

12. Here's to Molly and her book

just published..she lives on in our Hearts and Minds.