Mark Reed Levin (born September 21, 1957) is an American
lawyer,
author, 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]
Biography
Mark Reed Levin was born 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]
Radio broadcasting
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. He is a leading
conservative
commentator, ranked 4-6 position nationally among talk radio programs,
with a minimum of 7.75 million total weekly listenership according to
talkers.com."
[14] Levin is ranked in the top ten among
the most listened to radio programs in the US.
Writer
Men In Black: How The Supreme Court is Destroying America
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]
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.
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
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 Tyranny in
The 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.
Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America
Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America was released January 17,
2012. In Ameritopia, Levin discusses the origins and development of both
the modern day conservative and liberal political philosophies through
the works of some of the leading figures in American history. 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
The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic was released on August 13, 2013.
[25]
No comments:
Post a Comment