peacetakescourage.com

Check out this terrific website: Peace Takes Courage. It's smart, thorough, sober, well-designed - and steadfastly on the side of justice.

In fact, it's so well done, that it might surprise you to learn the blogger is a mere 16 years old.

At 5 feet 4 inches, with wavy red hair, braces and a cat named Kiko, 16-year-old Ava Lowery hardly seems like a girl who has angered some people enough to call her "a traitor" and a "terrorist" who's responsible for "emboldening the enemy."

That she has been the victim of vicious threats -- one e-mail to her Web site stated she needed "to die" and "get raped while your corpse rots in the sun" -- seems, upon meeting her, surreal. "I'm just a normal teenager," she says, turning on her computer in her room while Kiko sprawls on her bed. . . .

"I don't represent any group," Ava says in response to accusations that she's a front for a leftist organization or, as one e-mail accused, a "parrot" for liberal parents.

With two uncles who've served in Iraq and the first Gulf War and a "conservative" granddad who's a Vietnam veteran and former Pentecostal minister, Ava says matter-of-factly: "I speak for myself."

At the age in which most kids count their lucky stars for finally being old enough to drive, Ava feels proud of the fact that, as she calculates it, "I get 30,000 hits a day," -- the number of Internet users who visit her Web site, PeaceTakesCourage.com.

Ava Lowery is the kind of person I love to write about - a young person with brains, guts and initiative - a leader. I'd like to try to interest a teen magazine in her story. My experience with the glossy teen mags tells me it's probably a waste of time, but it's worth a shot.

Thanks to Allan for the tip on Lowery's site. Thanks to Ava Lowery for being who she is.