The Daily Flashback: Molly Ivins Edition

Celebrating America's Independence:

...The late Molly Ivins always used to write a Fourth of July column in which she exhorted readers to enjoy fighting for freedom, to get a laugh out of it, to understand that not being scared out of your own freedoms is to create for yourself a wondrous republic that could produce not only the Declaration of Independence, but plastic surgery for your dog, too.

"And here's to keeping America weird," she wrote, not long before she died. "To Scott Peterson and Kobe Bryant for making cable television so busy, happy and productive. Here's to the tabloids, eternally discovering alien zombies from outer space (have they checked out the Veep lately?). Here's to all our grumps and scolds, constantly insisting that we're going to hell in a handbasket. Where would we be without an active core of selfless citizens constantly prepared to tell us we're dumb, fat and lazy, and it's all our fault? Concerning our national habit of polling ourselves to find how just how dumb we are, a new study shows 88.2 percent of all Texans believe Osama bin Laden has two first names, like Jerry Jeff or Billy Bob...