Two liberal giants passed away this week, and we note their passing fondly.

Robert F. Drinan, S.J., lately a professor of law at Georgetown University, and before that at Boston College Law School, of which he was also Dean. During the ten years between his Deanship at Boston College and joining the Georgetown Law Center faculty in 1981, he served in the United States Congress as a Representative from Massachusetts, where he was a member of various committees and the chair of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice of the House Judiciary Committee. So far as I am aware, he was the only Roman Catholic priest ever to so serve.

I was privileged to have Father Drinan (pronounced Faahthah Drinan) as the Congressman from my home district in Massachusetts, and remember him fondly and with respect as an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War and a champion of civil rights and civil liberties.

Molly Ivins, irreverent, insightful, incisive Texan, spirited columnist and burster of balloons, also died this week, far, far too young. Blogger Scarecrow has a lovely post up on the firedoglake.com on today’s date, on which I cannot improve. Read about Molly, and read her own words, linked there. http://www.firedoglake.com/index.php?author=70

AMG