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Molly Ivins (born August 30 , 1944 , as Mary Tyler Ivins) is a progressive American Political Commentator , Journalist , and Author based in Austin , Texas . She is a syndicated Columnist with nationwide distribution; her column appears in over 300 Newspaper s across the United States. Her articles have appeared in '' Esquire '', '' The Atlantic Monthly '', '' The Nation '', '' Harper's '', '' The Progressive '', '' The Progressive Populist '', and '' Mother Jones ''. She has been a commentator for NPR , '' The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer '', and '' 60 Minutes ''. BIOGRAPHY Ivins was born in Monterey, California , and grew up in Houston in a staunchly Republican family. Her father was a corporate lawyer; her mother was a homemaker who held a B.A. in Psychology from Smith College . She attended St. John's School in Houston where she and future president George W. Bush had mutual friends. Ivins made her way to Liberalism on issues of Civil Rights ("once you realize they're lying to you about Race everything else follows") and the Vietnam War . She graduated from Smith College in 1966 and later attended the Columbia University Graduate School Of Journalism , where she received her M.A . Ivins also studied for a year at the '' Institut D'Etudes Politiques De Paris '' in Paris , France . Her first newspaper job was in the complaint department of the '' Houston Chronicle '', followed by the position of sewer editor. She went on to the '' Minneapolis Tribune '', where she was the first woman police reporter in that city and, later, the reporter who covered a beat called Movements for Social Change, where she notes that she wrote about "militant blacks, angry Indians, radical students, uppity women and a motley assortment of other misfits and troublemakers." 1970 brought Ivins back to her home state of Texas as co-editor of '' The Texas Observer '', a Muck-raking monthly, where she specialized in covering the Texas Legislature . In 1976, Ivins joined the '' New York Times '', first as a political reporter in New York City and Albany . She was then named their Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief. She says there was no one else in the bureau. Ivins, who is known for her colloquial, humorous style, has described her idea of Hell as "being edited by the Times Copy Desk for all eternity," and she was eventually fired for referring to a chicken-killing as a "gang pluck." In 1982, she returned to Texas as a columnist for the late '' Dallas Times Herald ''. After the newspaper closed, she spent the next nine years with the '' Fort Worth Star-Telegram ''. She became an independent journalist in 2001 and also in that year won the William Allen White Award from the University Of Kansas . Her other awards include the Smith Medal from Smith College , the Pringle Prize For Washington Journalism from Columbia University, and was elected to the National Academy Of Arts And Sciences . She was the 2003 recipient of the Ivan Allen, Jr. Prize for Progress and Service. She is an active member the Reporters Committee For Freedom Of The Press and Amnesty International 's Journalism Network. She has stated that her two greatest honors are that the Minneapolis police force named its mascot pig after her and that she was once banned from the campus of Texas A&M . She is noted for her generally liberal views. She has stated her admiration for William Cowper Brann , a late 19th-century Texas journalist, several times. In 2003 she coined the term Great Liberal Backlash Of 2003 . Cancer In 1999, Ivins was diagnosed with stage III , Ivins is now a speaker on surviving breast cancer. The cancer recurred in 2003 and again in late 2005. In January 2006 she reported that she was again undergoing Chemotherapy . {Link without Title} PLAGIARISM AND INCORRECT STATISTICS In 1995, humorist Florence King wrote in a ''The American Enterprise'' column that Ivins had plagiarized King's work and mis-stated a quotation from a King column in a 1988 ''Mother Jones'' article. Ivins apologized in a letter to King. King published Ivins's letter and King's own reply in a later article. In a 2005 column, Ivins incorrectly stated that Iraqi civilian deaths due to the Iraq War exceeded the number of Iraqis killed by Saddam Hussein . Ivins later printed an apologetic retraction. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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