Mark Levin

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This article is about the political commentator. For the journalist, see Mark Levine (journalist).
For other people named Mark Levin or Mark Levine, see Mark Levine (disambiguation).
Mark Levin

Mark Levin speaks at the Americans for Prosperity Defending the American Dream Conference in 2011.
Birth name Mark Reed Levin
Born September 21, 1957 (1957-09-21) (age 54)
Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Show The Mark Levin Show
Network Citadel Media
Time slot 6-9 p.m. EST
Style Talk radio
Country United States
Website http://marklevinshow.com

Mark Reed Levin (born September 21, 1957) is a lawyer, author and the host of American syndicated radio show The Mark Levin Show. Levin served in the administration of President Ronald Reagan and was a chief of staff for Attorney General Edwin Meese. He is president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, has authored bestselling books and contributes commentary to various media outlets such as National Review Online where he is a currently credited author.[1]

Contents

[edit] Biography

Mark R. Levin was born in Cheltenham Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a Jewish family. In 2010, Levin wrote the foreword to the book Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address Illustrated written by his father Jack E. Levin. Levin graduated from Cheltenham High School after three years.[2][3] After high school, Levin enrolled at Temple University Ambler including summer classes and graduated in 1977 at age 19, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.[4] Levin also earned a juris doctorate from Temple University Beasley School of Law in 1980.[5]

Beginning in 1981, Levin served as advisor to several members of President Ronald Reagan's cabinet, eventually becoming Associate Director of Presidential Personnel and ultimately Chief of Staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese; Levin also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education, and Deputy Solicitor of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

He practiced law in the private sector and is president of Landmark Legal Foundation, a conservative public interest law firm founded in 1976 and based in Leesburg, Virginia.

Levin is married to Kendall Levin.[6] They have two children, Lauren (born 1988) and Chase (born 1991).[7]

Levin has participated in Freedom Concerts, an annual benefit concert to aid families of fallen soldiers, and he uses his radio program to promote same.[8][9] Levin is also involved with Troopathon, a charity which sends care packages to soldiers serving overseas.[10]

In 2001, the American Conservative Union awarded Levin its Ronald Reagan Award.[11]

[edit] Radio broadcasting

See also: The Mark Levin Show

Levin began his broadcast career as a guest on conservative talk radio programs. For many years he was a frequent contributor of legal opinions to The Rush Limbaugh Show, where Limbaugh referred to him on-air as "F. Lee Levin," a tongue-in-cheek reference to the famous defense attorney F. Lee Bailey. He was also a contributor to The Sean Hannity Show and eventually got a radio slot of his own on WABC, following Sean Hannity's program. Hannity has nicknamed Mark Levin "The Great One".[12] Levin and Hannity remain frequent contributors to each other's programs.

[edit] Writer

[edit] Men In Black: How The Supreme Court is Destroying America

Levin authored the bestselling book, Men In Black: How The Supreme Court Is Destroying America[13] in 2005, in which Levin advanced his thesis that activist judges on the Supreme Court (from all parts of the political spectrum) have "legislated from the bench." In her review of Men in Black, Slate magazine's legal correspondent and journalist Dahlia Lithwick wrote that "no serious scholar of the court or the Constitution, on the ideological left or right, is going to waste their time engaging Levin's arguments once they've read this book."[14] In contrast, a review in the Defense Counsel Journal described Men in Black as "a forceful indictment of what Levin identifies as an increasingly 'activist' court for amending our national Constitution in the guise of construing it."[15]

[edit] Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish

In 2007, Levin released a book about his dogs, Pepsi and Sprite. Specifically, the book was about Sprite, a Spaniel mix that his wife and son persuaded him to adopt from the local shelter in 2004. The book was titled Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish.[16] Rescuing Sprite chronicles Sprite’s health deterioration in 2006 and how Levin and his family dealt with their loss.

[edit] Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto[17] was released on March 24, 2009, and became a No. 1 New York Times best seller for eleven of twelve weeks,[18] as well as No. 1 on Nielsen's BookScan.[19] It comes in at No. 2 on Amazon.com's list of bestselling books of 2009.[20] The book includes discussion of a variety of issues that, according to Levin, need to be addressed in the United States. Liberty and Tyranny has sold over one million copies according to Threshold Editions, the book's publisher.[21] Former federal prosecutor and fellow National Review Online author Andrew C. McCarthy wrote of Liberty and Tyranny in The New Criterion:

We are in the high tide of America’s Leftist ascendancy: the Obama evisceration of individual freedom and installation of authoritarian collectivism—at warp speed, driven by an ambition that would have made Woodrow Wilson and FDR blush. Against this tidal wave, Levin offers not so much a defense as a plan of attack, a clarion call to roll back the seas of Change.[22]

Taking a contrary view, Steve Almond of Salon wrote that

the tantalizing beauty of a Mark Levin's text resides precisely in this ability to attribute any crisis of State to its nefarious indulgences. The current economic meltdown, for instance, should not be blamed on the psychotic greed of Wall Street, but on the State's deranged need to throw money at the undeserving, i.e. the sickly and the poor.[23]

[edit] Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America

Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America was released January 17, 2012. Amazon's publication notes describe this book as exploring "the psychology, motivations, and history of the utopian movement, its architects, and its modern day disciples – and how the individual and American society are being devoured by it."[24]

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Mark R. Levin Archive, National Review Online". http://www.nationalreview.com/author/53282. Retrieved 2011-04-24. 
  2. ^ Cheltenham alumni website
  3. ^ Carey, Art (July 16, 2009). "Looking at liberty and tyranny Author and radio host Mark Levin offers a conservative view.". Philadelphia Inquirer. p. 3. 
  4. ^ Mark R. Levin bio by National Review
  5. ^ Jeffrey, Terence P.; Ryskind, Allan H. (October 2, 2006). "Mark Levin Takes Talk Radio by Storm". Human Events. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=17298. Retrieved February 1, 2012. 
  6. ^ Limbaugh, Rush (November 16, 2007). "Mark Levin In-Studio on "Rescuing Sprite"". The Rush Limbaugh Show. http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2007/11/16/mark_levin_in_studio_on_rescuing_sprite2. Retrieved January 24, 2012. 
  7. ^ Levin, Rescuing Sprite, p. 9.
  8. ^ "Sean Hannity, Freedom Concert comes to Nokia Theatre". http://www.thechronicleonline.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=572&Itemid=348. [dead link]
  9. ^ "Montgomery Gentry loves country and sings for "Freedom"". New York Daily News. 2007-09-11. http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2007/09/11/2007-09-11_montgomery_gentry_loves_country_and_sing.html. Retrieved 2009-12-04. 
  10. ^ "Troopathon Homepage". Move America Forward. http://www.troopathon.org/index.php. Retrieved 2009-12-04. 
  11. ^ "Ronald Reagan Award Presented to Landmark's President Mark Levin". Landmark Legal Foundation. http://www.landmarklegal.org/DesktopFrame.aspx?frame=LONGTEXT&itemid=375. Retrieved 2009-12-04. 
  12. ^ Mark Levin Retrieved 2010-08-28.
  13. ^ ISBN 0-89526-050-6
  14. ^ Dahlia Lithwick, "The Limbaugh Code: The New York Times best seller no one is talking about.", Slate, April 1, 2005
  15. ^ "Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America", Defense Counsel Journal , January 1, 2006.
  16. ^ ISBN 1-41655-913-2.
  17. ^ ISBN 1-41656-285-0
  18. ^ "Hardcover Nonfiction". The New York Times. 2009-06-21. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/books/bestseller/besthardnonfiction.html?ref=bestseller. 
  19. ^ Nielsens Bookscan Liberty and Tyranny, April 9, 2009
  20. ^ Amazon.com
  21. ^ Vivian, Jordan (2009-09-15). "Liberty and Tyranny Sells a Million". Human Events. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=33558. Retrieved 2009-09-21. 
  22. ^ McCarthy, Andrew (2009-05). "The Work of Generations". New Criterion. http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-work-of-generations-4086. Retrieved 2009-10-08. 
  23. ^ Almond, Steve (2009-09-12). "Glenn Beck is the future of literary fiction". Salon.com. http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2009/09/12/rightwing_bestsellers/print.html. Retrieved 2009-09-24. 
  24. ^ http://www.amazon.com/Ameritopia-Unmaking-Mark-R-Levin/dp/1439173249/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321846400&sr=8-1

[edit] External links

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