Mark Levin

Bill Maher on Friday made the indefensible claim that the Founding Fathers if they were alive today would hate members of the Tea Party.

On Monday, conservative talk radio host Mark Levin responded to the "stupid, little, white, comedian guy" (partial transcript and commentary follows, audio available here courtesy Right Scoop):

Keith Olbermann started his Special Comment Monday boasting that he was the only political commentator in America that has "expressed the slightest introspection, the slightest self-awareness, the slightest remorse, the slightest ownership of the existence" of violent rhetoric in the nation.

Roughly twelve minutes later, the "Countdown" host concluded his nonsensical blathering by stating, "In an actual open and shut slam dunk case in which a partisan of the Right attempted to kill one of the Left, the Right would blame the victim" (video follows with transcript and loads of commentary):

A new poll just released by Quinnipiac University finds very few Americans agree with the media's view that heated political rhetoric was responsible for Saturday's tragic shootings in Tucson, Arizona.

What should also surprise all of the so-called journalists that have been accusing conservative politicians and pundits for inciting Jared Lee Loughner to commit this heinous act is that people feel liberals are more responsible for this rhetoric than folks on the right (emphasis added throughout):

As NewsBusters previously reported, Chris Matthews on Tuesday blamed conservative talk radio hosts Mark Levin and Michael Savage for supposedly creating the climate of hate that led to Saturday's shootings in Tucson, Arizona.

On Wednesday, FBN's Don Imus and his sidekick Bernard McGuirk responded to the "angry," "vile," "psycho," "spittle-spewing" MSNBCer (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Chris Matthews, joined by two liberal talk radio hosts on Tuesday's Hardball, essentially blamed the likes of conservative hosts like Mark Levin for creating the climate of hate that led to the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords as the envious MSNBC host proclaimed: "People like Mark Levin, Michael Savage...every time you listen to them are furious, furious at the left with anger that's just builds and builds in their voice and by the time they go to commercial, they're just in some rage, every night, with ugly talk....They must have an audience. I looked at the numbers today. They have big audiences! And I guess that's the question. Why and is it ever going to stop if it keeps working?"

Before that Matthews rant, Philadelphia area radio host Michael Smerconish coined a word in his attack on conservative chatter as he talked about "the hatriolic comments" he's heard and in referring to a scene he saw at a town hall meeting worried: "These are people who are on the edge and if somebody pushes them over, God help us all."

E. Steven Collins, another Philly area talker, sided with Arizona Sheriff Clarence Dupnik who attacked Rush Limbaugh, as he hailed: "The sheriff in Tucson was absolutely right...It does impact people who may have a mental problem or may not" and added that there was a "direct relationship" with Sarah Palin putting crosshairs on her Web site over Giffords' district and the loss of a life of "that little girl who went down to meet the congressperson." 

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On Thursday, NewsBusters made it clear that no matter how Sarah Palin answered Katie Couric's pathetic reading list question back in 2008, the liberal media were going to ridicule her.

On Friday, this point was made even clearer when Mark Levin told his radio audience that Palin's answer to Barbara Walters' same question on ABC's "10 Most Fascinating People of 2010" was edited to remove his best-selling book "Liberty and Tyranny" (audio follows courtesy Right Scoop):

As NewsBusters reported moments ago, Joe Scarborough took some cheap shots at former Alaska governor Sarah Palin during Wednesday's "Morning Joe."

After seeing our piece on this issue, Mark Levin struck back at MSNBC's so-called conservative via Facebook:

Conservative talk show host Mark Levin on Thursday demanded a retraction by Politico concerning statements made in Jonathan Martin's hit piece of the former Alaska Governor entitled "Hurricane Sarah."

In a Facebook posting, Levin said Martin's claim that Palin "backed out of planned interviews with conservative talk-show hosts Sean Hannity and Mark Levin the morning she was scheduled to talk to them" is "a flat out lie":

 On Monday’s Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann mocked Minnesota Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, tagging her as "Worst Person in the World," for her recent declaration in an interview with World Net Daily that she would like to dine with Jesus Christ, Ann Coulter and a number of other historical and public figures. In addition to cracking that Coulter would accuse Jesus of being gay and that conservative talk radio host Mark Levin would "run out on the check," the MSNBC host concluded that Jesus would try to stop Bachmann and presumably other conservatives from "mak[ing] the House of Representatives a house of morons."

Olbermann: "Coulter would question Jesus’s sexuality. Levin would run out on the check. And Jesus would shout, "Get these out of here. Do not make the House of Representatives a house of morons," and then turn over the table. You know, like in the Real Housewives of New Jersey."

The Countdown host went on to mock the conservative concept of adhering to the original intent of the Constitution as meaning slavery would be legal and that women would not have the right to vote. Olbermann:

Earlier this evening, conservative radio host and friend of NewsBusters Mark Levin conducted a nearly 20-minute interview with Gloria Allred, a celebrity attorney who's also known for her liberal politics.

[The interview is definitely worth a listen. For the full segment, click here to access the audio.]

Allred is representing one Nicky Diaz, an illegal immigrant who worked as a housekeeper for California Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman. Allred alleges Whitman employed Diaz knowing that she was an illegal immigrant. Whitman denies the allegation and says she fired Diaz after learning that she was an illegal.

Levin, a veteran of the Reagan Justice Department and president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, grilled Allred for, among other things, willingly exposing her client to legal jeopardy. Diaz is, after all, an illegal immigrant who quite possibly committed Social Security fraud, a federal felony.

Levin also asked Allred if she was working for Diaz pro bono or if she was being paid by a third party. Allred declined to disclose that information and also denied any collaboration with the campaign of Whitman's Democratic opponent, Jerry Brown.

Former top Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson is a Washington Post columnist, and there is never a better time for right-leaning columnists to lean left than in the last weeks of an election season. (See George Will trashing Sen. George Allen in the last weeks of 2006.) His rant also may have granted Gerson a seat on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday.

Gerson not only denounced Christine O'Donnell as a wacky candidate like Alan Keyes, he denounced "the childish political thought of the Tea Party." He insisted conservatives were like Bolsheviks. Bloggers like Michelle Malkin and talk show hosts like Mark Levin were "unhinged" against Karl Rove:

While Rove's critique was tough, the reaction in parts of the conservative blogosphere has been unhinged. Michelle Malkin wrote that it "might as well have been Olbermann on MSNBC." Mark Levin pronounced Rove at "war against the Tea Party movement and conservatives." "In terms of the conservative movement," wrote Dan Riehl, "we should not simply ignore him, but proactively work to undermine Rove in whatever ways we can, given his obvious willingness to undermine us."

Conservative radio host Mark Levin thinks Delaware Republican senatorial nominee Christine O'Donnell is "smart to bypass" the Sunday talk shows she was scheduled to appear on this week.

As the Associated Press reported Saturday, O'Donnell canceled her appearances on CBS's "Face the Nation" and FNC's "Fox News Sunday":

Campaign spokeswoman Diana Banister cited scheduling conflicts and said O'Donnell needed to return to Delaware for commitments to church events and afternoon picnic with Republicans in a key county where she has solid backing. 

Sunday morning, Levin told his Facebook followers this was a good decision:

Want to make friends in "elite" political blogosphere? Don't dare be outspoken on behalf of Delaware Republican U.S. Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell.

In a Sept. 15 post on his The Atlantic blog, "The Daily Dish," Sullivan takes a break from gossiping about political figures' genitalia to take on conservative talker Mark Levin's response to those who were seemingly hell-bent on O'Donnell not being the Delaware GOP nominee within the conservative media intelligentsia.

After going through a litany of Levin's alleged indiscretions against O'Donnell detractors, Sullivan argues that his so-called "conservative" counterparts had it coming since Levin had been so critical of the pseudo-intellectuals that have masqueraded as conservatives over the years.

Anxiety was pretty high in the heat of battle with the race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. However, a lot of that tension exists beyond the state of Delaware and there have been self-proclaimed conventional wisdom wizards critical of how the electoral process in Delaware has worked itself out.

One of those has been former embattled Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel, who in a Slate.com post dated Sept. 14, took a few shots at conservative talker Mark Levin, calling him a "creep" for his criticisms of The Weekly Standard John McCormack, author of an unfavorable story about Delaware U.S. Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell.

"This is absolutely pathetic," Weigel wrote of Levin's critique. "No, Mark, when reporters investigate female candidates, they are not ‘obsessed,' any more than you're obsessed with Hillary Clinton when you call her 'her thighness' and ‘Hillary Rotten Clinton.' They're reporting. For all of your posing about legal theory and the Constitution, you make it pretty clear here that you're a political hack."

Best-selling author, syndicated conservative radio host and friend of NewsBusters Mark Levin has sent along his warm wishes for our fifth anniversary.

We thought we'd let you hear The Great One for yourselves.

Click here for the MP3.

Transcript included below the page break:

Mark Levin highlighted some news from Sweden on his national radio show about a man who sewed up his own gash in his leg. Levin said "get ready for it," joking about how efficient ObamaCare was going to be. This human-interest story will probably not make the liberal media. From The Local:

A 32-year-old took the needle into his hands when he tired of the wait at Sundsvall hospital in northern Sweden and sewed up the cut in his leg himself. The man was later reported to the police for his impromptu handiwork.

"It took such a long time," the man told the local Sundsvall Tidning daily.

The man incurred the deep cut when he sliced his leg on the sharp edge of a kitchen stove while he was renovating at home.

It would appear that someone at CNBC listened to the Mark Levin Show on Thursday. Either that, or someone at the network paid attention to his or her e-mail alerts and read my post that went up in the wee hours Friday morning (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog). Likely in response to our criticisms, CNBC has revised and "clarified" a report by CNBC staff writer Jeffrey Cox.

The network's revised and "clarified" report still fails to sufficiently inform readers. In fact, the new version seems to be the result of a meeting where the topic of discussion was: "What are the least informative changes we can make while being technically correct?"

On his show Thursday night, Levin referred to Cox's probably original version (now Google cached; copy saved here at my web host for future reference) addressing Deutsche Bank analysts' fears that the expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of the year will have a sharply negative economic impact. (For what it's worth, I prefer to describe what's coming as a plain-and-simple tax increase, simply because after what will have been eight years -- 2003 through 2010 -- everyone has long since gotten used to the current income tax structure.)

Here are the first two paragraphs of Cox's report as found by Levin and yours truly (bold is mine):

Randi Rhodes believes she knows the original intent of the Founding Fathers -- and that it was their intention to brutalize conservative talk-radio stars Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin. On Wednesday afternoon's show, she was ripping into Arizona's immigration law, and how conservatives aren't democratic, and liberals are the forces of freedom and the Constitution: 

Because they’re not democratic. Because they are what they say we are. They are actually the controlling freaks that they think we are. We are the people who believe in freedom. We are the people who believe in one man, one vote. We are the people that believe that the Constitution matters, and that if the Constitution has a requirement that federal immigration is the purview of the federal government to administer and enforce all immigration laws, then we actually stand by that, whether or not, you know, we think that was the right decision or the wrong decision for the Framers to have chosen. [Mocking] The founders. The fathers. The founding fathers. This is why I retch every time when their start with their founding father – with their love.

Thomas Jefferson would bitch-slap Rush Limbaugh so hard -- I swear -- and oh, Mark Levin - can you imagine Ben Franklin going up against Mark Levin, and what mincemeat he would make out of that bald little psycho? I mean, seriously! Five minutes -- they wouldn't even last five minutes! There would be a duel immediately on the streets of New York! It’s so good.

In light of the challenges facing the country and the need for clarity in the age of Obama, The Mount Vernon Statement, modeled on the Sharon Statement issued on Sept. 11, 1960, is a defining statement of conservative beliefs, values and principles penned by a broad coalition of conservative leaders representing a wide spectrum of the movement including fiscal, social, cultural and national security conservatives.

Since Rand Paul has dropped out of this week's episode of "Meet the Press," Mark Levin has challenged MTP host David Gregory to appear on his syndicated radio show.

MP3 audio for download here or you can enjoy this clip from our friends at The Right Scoop:

There's a new speech sheriff in the town of Fresno, California, and they want to silence conservative talk radio.  And they'll say or do whatever it takes to get it done.

New "community group" Citizens for Civility & Accountability in Media (CCAM) is super-peeved at Fresno, California radio station KMJ for having the temerity to broadcast (on their two stations) conservative talk radio hosts to whom people want to listen.

Because, you see, it's "hate speech" - according to CCAM.  And therefore, KMJ should "alter their programming" (read: change their content by silencing conservatives) "in order to curtail practices that we believe to be damaging to our social fabric and to civility in public discourse."

It would seem the residents of Fresno do not believe that Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and others on KMJ are "damaging to our social fabric and to civility in public discourse."  But that could not matter less to CCAM.

This local "community group" has organized a press conference for today at 11AM PT to publicly call on KMJ to dump these conservative hosts, who according to them:

Mark Levin promoted NewsBusters and its parent organization, the Media Research Center, on his radio show today. "Everyone knows the media have a very strong left-wing bias," Levin noted, "and that's largely due to 23 years of Brent Bozell's hard work at the Media Research Center, which has proven it." NewsBusters, Levin added, "is the place for up to the minute analysis on media bias and other hot stories."

(If embedded audio player does not appear, click here to listen to the ad.)

Levin lauded NB sister site, and MRC's reporting arm, CNS News, as the place to go for "the stories the libs don't want you to know about." He also encouraged his listeners to pick up one of the free "I don't believe the liberal media" bumper stickers.

Many thanks to Mark and his staff. Keep up the great work!

So what happens when you put the likes of David Frum, Bruce Bartlett and now apparently Jim Manzi - pseudo-conservatives with a penchant for criticizing Republicans and other conservatives all in the same place?

You have the makings of a New York Times hit piece on conservatism. In the April 27 issue of the Times, a story in its Style section of all places by Patricia Cohen, singled out and accused a number of conservatives of "closed-mindedness" or as the article claimed "epistemic closure."

"It is hard to believe that a phrase as dry as ‘epistemic closure' could get anyone excited, but the term has sparked a heated argument among conservatives in recent weeks about their movement's intellectual health," Cohen wrote. "The phrase is being used as shorthand by some prominent conservatives for a kind of closed-mindedness in the movement, a development they see as debasing modern conservatism's proud intellectual history."

On Thursday evening our good friend Mark Levin cited and read from the latest Media Research Center special report, "TV's Tea Party Travesty: How ABC, CBS and NBC Have Dismissed and Disparaged the Tea Party Movement."

You can hear that segment by clicking here for the MP3 audio file (courtesy of Levin's producer Richard Semanta).

Here's the transcript by MRC intern Alex Fitzsimmons:

Where are all the big taxers and spenders today? You heard from any of them? But the Tea Party protestors are out there and that's a good thing. All over the country-and the media hate them. And we know this is a matter of empirical fact now thanks to our friends at the Media Research Center. Hat tip to Drudge Report who links to them: MRC.org. And they've done an analysis that reviewed every mention of the Tea Party on ABC, CBS, and NBC morning and evening newscasts, the Sunday talk shows, ABC's "Nightline," from February 19, 2009 through March 31, 2010.

Now here among their major findings is how our "news outlets" our big news outlets, our liberal news outlets, treat the American people who attend these rallies. They write:

In case you missed it -- and you may well have as the mainstream media aren't making hay out of it* -- yesterday President Obama completely flubbed a softball question tossed by a sports announcer (via RealClearSports):

Rob Dibble asks Obama who one of his favorite White Sox players was while growing up in Chicago. Obama stumbles and avoids the question. Maybe he misheard the question or maybe he was acting like a typical politician and avoiding the question because he didn't have an answer.

Mark Levin picked up on the incident at the start of his April 5 program. You can hear audio of that here, courtesy of Levin's producer, Richard Semanta.

Filling in for Mark Levin on his national radio talk show on Thursday, Houston radio host Michael Berry picked up on MRC’s recently-released “Media Bias 101” report detailing dozens of polls since 1981 showing journalists liberal attitudes and strongly pro-Democratic voting record. “I'm sitting on a great study done by the Media Research Center, Media Bias 101,” Berry enthused. “It's one of the best reports I've ever seen.” [audio excerpt here]

Berry was making the point that new media technologies such as Facebook lets citizens inform each other and mobilize to affect public policy without being dependent on a relatively few unrepresentative journalists: “The ability for people to communicate and to interact in the way that Facebook allows is an absolute game changer....People that can’t get hired at big newspapers or big TV stations [are now] changing public policy in profound ways.”

Here’s some of what Berry had to say near the beginning of the first hour of the March 4 Mark Levin Show (Levin was off that night getting ready for his Friday night speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California.)

At last there appears to be a president worse than Jimmy Carter - at least according to conservative talk show host Mark Levin. 

That was the question host Don Imus asked Levin on the Fox Business Network's "Imus in the Morning."  "So the President Obama, worse than Jimmy Carter?"

"Worse than Jimmy Carter? I mean they're not mutually exclusive, they're both disasters," Levin replied, citing many of the parallels of the two administrations. 

Where would the world be without an independent, citizen-run type of media? It would be in a dark place, according to Media Research Center President and Founder Brent Bozell.

Bozell addressed CPAC on Feb. 20 about the state of the media. He cited how bloggers played a role in unearthing the former White House "green jobs czar" Van Jones past for signing a statement about the September 11 truthers and for stating he was a communist.

"Van Jones was a story that was broken by a blogger," Bozell said. "Say that after me - God bless bloggers, God bless bloggers, God bless bloggers. Now this blogger writes a story about one of the Obama czars. Now these czars, these guys are dangerous for all sorts of reasons. They're not elected. They're not confirmed. And they're not even announced. You just hear about them. They're like maggots. You pick up a rock and you find a czar."

More video embedded below fold

I don’t know when or where or even if Joe Scarborough’s radio show airs in my area, nor do I care. The other night a friend caught this clip from his radio show and sent it to me. It’s about a blog which is published by the organization I head.

"NewsBusters, which just loves writing negative articles about me, I don’t know why, a lot of really false ones and I don’t know what’s actually gotten into Brent Bozell, but he actually goes out of his way to write false articles about me now…They just distort the news for their own purposes."

Now I know why MSNBC hired Joe Scarborough. He’s about as accurate and honest as everyone else there.

False articles? Here’s something Joe knows, because he and I have had this conversation privately already: I’ve never written a bloody article about him. Ever.

As for conservative bloggers at NewsBusters writing false articles about him, that is equally untrue. Have they sometimes been negative? Guilty as charged – and for good reason. Increasingly he’s making statements that are stupid, or reckless, or provocative, or insulting, or a combination of all the above.