Mark Levin
| |
|---|---|
Levin at an Americans for Prosperity conference in 2011
| |
| Born | Mark Reed Levin (1957-09-21) September 21, 1957 (age 66) |
| Career | |
| Show | The Mark Levin Show |
| Station | WABC |
| Network | Cumulus Media Networks |
| Time slot | 6-9 p.m. EST |
| Style | Talk radio |
| Country | United States |
| Website | marklevinshow.com |
Mark Reed Levin (born September 21, 1957) is an American lawyer, author, conservative commentator, and the host of American syndicated radio show The Mark Levin Show. Levin worked 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 five books and contributes commentary to various media outlets such as National Review Online.[1]
Mark Reed Levin was born to a Jewish family, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Erdenheim and Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. His father, Jack E. Levin, is the author of several books.[2] He graduated from Cheltenham High School after three years in 1974.[3][4] After high school, Levin enrolled at Temple University Ambler including summer classes and graduated with a bachelor's degree in Political Science in 1977 at age 19, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.[5] Levin won election to the Cheltenham school board in 1977 on a platform of reducing property taxes.[4] In 1980, Levin earned a juris doctor from Temple University Beasley School of Law.[6] Levin worked for Texas Instruments after law school.[4]
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 public interest law firm founded in 1976 and based in Leesburg, Virginia.[7][8]
Levin has participated in Freedom Concerts, an annual benefit concert to aid families of fallen soldiers, and he uses his radio program to promote aid to military families.[9][10] Levin is also involved with Troopathon, a charity which sends care packages to soldiers serving overseas.[11]
In 2001, the American Conservative Union awarded Levin its Ronald Reagan Award.[12]
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."[13] Levin and Hannity remain frequent contributors to each other's programs. His on-air style (frequent yelling and ranting) has been the subject of parody and he has been embroiled in several on-air feuds, including one with fellow conservative Michael Savage.[14]
Levin authored the 2005 book Men In Black: How The Supreme Court Is Destroying America, in which he 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."[15] 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."[16]
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. Rescuing Sprite chronicles Sprite’s health deterioration in 2006 and how Levin and his family dealt with their loss.
Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto was released on March 24, 2009, and became a #1 New York Times best seller for eleven of twelve weeks,[17] as well as No. 1 on Nielsen's BookScan.[18] It comes in at No. 2 on Amazon.com's list of bestselling books of 2009.[19] 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.[20] Former federal prosecutor and fellow National Review Online author Andrew C. McCarthy wrote of Liberty and TyrannyinThe New Criterion: "Levin offers not so much a defense as a plan of attack" against "America's Leftist ascendancy".McCarthy, Andrew (May 2009). "The Work of Generations". New Criterion. Retrieved 2009-10-08. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America was released January 17, 2012. Levin uses the term "Ameritopia" to describe the United States as having become a "post-Constitutional" country.[21] Included are commentaries on works by Plato, Sir Thomas More, Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx, John Locke, Charles de Montesquieu and Alexis de Tocqueville.[22] A review by Professor Carlin Romano in the Chronicle of Higher Education called the book "disastrously bad from beginning to end."[23] Jeffrey Lord, writing in the conservative American Spectator, called it "...historical X-ray vision in book form."[24]
The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic was released on August 13, 2013.[25]
{{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
{{cite web}}: soft hyphen character in |title= at position 30 (help)
| International |
|
|---|---|
| National |
|
| Academics |
|
| Other |
|
| Warning | Local parameters are deprecated. |
