Catherine Seipp, who died Wednesday at 49, was a conservative writer whose spunky "From the Left Coast" column for National Review Online skewered orthodoxies of left, center, and sometimes even right.

A Republican with conservative views on issues such as abortion and gay marriage, she nevertheless was quick to come to the support of public schools when her own experience indicated that her daughter could get a better education there.

Still, Seipp was at her most delicious when on the warpath with liberal pieties. When the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation issued a news release headlined, "Survey Finds LGBT Muslims Were Scared And Harassed After 9/11," she responded: "Not scared or harassed in Iraq or Afghanistan or Egypt, but in the U.S. and Canada and Britain. Because compared to life under George Bush or Tony Blair, it's all kite-flying fun and sales at Barneys in the average Islamist person-of-color dictatorship."

"Her crankiness revealed a powerful moral sense, plus a sensitivity to detail, plus a ferocious energy - all of which made for terrific writing," the Slate blogger and author of "The End of Equality," Mickey Kaus, wrote on the National Review Online Web site. "A conversation with her was a cleansing acid bath."

Seipp was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, moved to Southern California at 4, and enrolled at the University of California at Los Angeles at 16. After working briefly for the Associated Press, she became a fashion writer at the Daily News, the smaller of Los Angeles's two mainstream daily newspapers.

In 1991, she began writing "Our Times," a press criticism column aimed mostly at the Los Angeles Times that ran in Buzz magazine. The column achieved notoriety for its head-banging attention to political correctness at the Times, a juicy and frequent target for conservatives. At first, she used the pseudonym Margo Magee, the name of one of the catty roommates in the comic strip "Apartment 3G."

After leaving Buzz when it folded in 1998, Seipp's work appeared widely in Salon, Forbes, Penthouse, and the New York Press, where she had a "Letter from L.A." column. She also was a regular guest on CNBC's "The Dennis Miller Show."

About five years ago, Seipp, a nonsmoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer, which she tracked on her blog, "Cathy's World." Typically, the disease became material for her, including a withering critique last year of how Blue Cross victimizes its clients.

"I still find myself in a predicament that is the insurer's misfortune as well as my own," she wrote. "‘I'm everyone's worst nightmare,' I told a friend when he called me in the hospital. ‘Cathy, you already were everyone's worst nightmare,' he said. We laughed because he used to be my editor, and so certainly knew this is true."

Amy Alkon, the syndicated "Advice Goddess, recalls attending a party celebrating what turned out to be the temporary remission in Seipp's cancer. At one point, Seipp stood up and said, "I just want to let everyone know having cancer hasn't made me a better person."

The truth teller finally said something unbelievable.

Seipp was divorced and leaves behind a daughter, as well as her parents and a sister.