Mark Levin

Perhaps there is something obstructing the view overlooking Rockefeller Plaza, where MSNBC broadcasts "Countdown" nightly because the show's host, Keith Olbermann fails to see the existence of a news media with a liberal bias.

On MSNBC's Dec. 14 broadcast of "Countdown," Olbermann came to the defense of NBC's "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" executive producer and noted left-winger Dick Wolf. The Dec. 9 episode of Wolf's program featured a killer who targeted the children of illegal immigrants and in that episode, one of the characters, played by John Larroquette, blamed conservatives "like Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck" for inciting violence against immigrants. That prompted O'Reilly on Dec. 10, the next broadcast of the Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor," to fire back at Wolf.

And that led Olbermann to respond to O'Reilly, five days later, which deteriorated into Olbermann making the seemingly laughable assertion there is no such thing as the liberal media. Olbermann began his tirade by attacking Andrew Breitbart, who is launching a Web site called "Big Journalism," which will take on "the Democratic-media complex."

The Washington Post has a problem with partisan memory loss.

Many of you may have heard of the recent nastiness of a Virginia homeowners’ association attempting to deny Colonel Van T. Barfoot (U.S. Army, Ret.), a Congressional Medal of Honor winner, the right to erect a flagpole in his own front yard.  If you are like me, you heard about this first on Wednesday, December 2, on the Mark Levin radio show.

If you’re like the Washington Post, however, you heard about it from Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) on December 3, 2009.

Today’s WaPo story, by Christian Davenport, sums up the participants in the flagpole fracas in this way:

Amazon has announced its 2009 best selling books, and Mark Levin's "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto" and Glenn Beck's "Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government" are number two and three respectively.

This will certainly ruin Chris Matthews' day, as the MSNBCer back in September agonized over there being "so much right-wing crap on the best seller list these days."

And who can forget Arianna Huffington last Monday wondering if "The New York Times [should] create a separate bestseller list for conservative blockbusters?" 

With this in mind, we at NewsBusters hope the following announcement by Amazon brings tears to liberal media members' eyes from sea to shining sea:

According to The Huffington Post, Michelle Malkin, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and other right-of-center stars that regularly dominate the New York Times Hardcover Non-Fiction Bestsellers List are - or should be - in a league of their own.

No, that isn't Arianna Huffington's blog heaping praise on conservative authors. It's a literal suggestion. With right-leaning books and authors holding so many spots on the list, and more to come - former Sarah Palin, former Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush all have books due out -Huffington Post suggests conservatives should have their own category to differentiate from other works of non-fiction.

In a Nov. 9 entry on The Huffington Post that laments Fox News host Glenn Beck pulling a feat not done before - holding the number one spot on The New York Times' four lists: hardcover fiction, hardcover non-fiction, paperback non-fiction and children's - they suggest a separate category altogether, not for political non-fiction, but conservative non-fiction.

On the syndicated The Chris Matthews Show, over the weekend, conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin was mocked by Chris Matthews for playing to the "wingnuts" at a Capitol Hill rally. Before running a clip of Levin, MSNBC host broke down the new GOP coalition as "regular Republicans," "energized conservatives," and "the wingnuts!" and added: "Talk show host Mark Levin spoke to all of them!"

The following exchange was aired on the November 8 edition of the The Chris Matthews Show [MP3 audio clip here]:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Tuesday's election results gave Republicans a big boost. A year from now they hope their loose coalition will unite to beat a lot of Democrats. What's that coalition? Well it's regular Republicans, people that have been Republicans all their lives. It’s also energized conservatives. People philosophically opposed to what they see as a creeping big government. Third - it's people just upset about the economy and the loss of jobs. And fourth - it's the wingnuts! Talk show host Mark Levin spoke to all of them at that rally at the Capitol this week.

At the Capitol Hill rally against nationalized health care on Thursday, talk-radio host and author Mark Levin talked to the press: "These are citizen patriots out here, and I’m tired of them being smeared." Some didn’t get the message. In Friday’s Washington Post, columnist Dana Milbank played the usual game of quoting the wackiest signs and smearing thousands of people with them.

His column’s title was "No one said freedom was pretty." On the homepage of the Post website, it said: "Milbank: Michele Bachmann's anti-health reform event brings out the party of no taste." Here’s a sample of Milbank’s account:

In the front of the protest, a sign showed President Obama in white coat, his face painted to look like the Joker. The sign, visible to the lawmakers as they looked into the cameras, carried a plea to "Stop Obamunism." A few steps farther was the guy holding a sign announcing "Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds" [sic], accusing Obama of being part of a Jewish plot to introduce the antichrist.

Brian Maloney at Radio Equalizer reported the "Reverend" Al Sharpton gloating on his talk radio show over his successful cable-news campaigning to ruin Rush Limbaugh's ownership bid for the  St. Louis Rams, mocking Limbaugh's "bellyaching" and the "screeching of the defeated." He went on to question whether Limbaugh was losing his mind.

SHARPTON: You know I’m told now through e-mails that Mr. Limbaugh now is saying that this is a conspiracy with the President Obama and me and George Soros and everyone. I really think he’s having delusions Brittany, I mean (Brittany Sharpton giggling in the background) his partners dropped him. I mean, what is he talking about? They withdrew his name, he was exposed for what he said and now the whole government and me an everybody’s conspired against him? I mean you know this is -- he’s not well.

BRITTANY SHARPTON, niece and radio show sidekick: He’s way too old to be crying like a baby. Ha ha ha.

SHARPTON: Yeah, this is making less and less sense.

This isn't something you see every day: a member of the media scolding colleagues for criticizing conservative talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin.

Yet, that's exactly what Howard Kurtz did on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday as he took on all the recent carping and whining about the message being relayed over the airwaves by the Right's strongest voices.

Kurtz even went after the so-called conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks (video embedded below the fold, relevant section at 36:50):

It’s really strange when MSNBC personalities wish for more civility in the political process. Morning Meeting host Dylan Ratigan brought on pseudo-Republican consultant Mark McKinnon on Monday to discuss his attack on talk radio on the liberal Daily Beast website. McKinnon obliged (Audio available here):

I think the Chicago incident, I think it was bad political instincts and bad political judgment, but I was disappointed that it didn't come to America. I think it’s patriotic, that we should have supported that move. So I was very disappointed to see talk show hosts like Mark Levin coming out with just jaw-dropping hate language about the President, and, again, echoing what one your panelists said earlier about reveling in the President's failure. That is very disappointing to see on both sides.

In response, Levin told NewsBusters:

Mark McKinnon -- This guy has a very loose jaw and the political integrity of a Sham-Wow salesman. He first worked at the highest levels on the McCain campaign and then resigned because he couldn't bring himself to campaign against Obama. What a guy. That's why he's invited on MSNBC. McKinnon, Brooks, Frum, et al, do not debate substance. They trash conservatives and conservatism. But if McKinnon wants to hear hate language, I understand the president's chief of staff, former minister, Weather Underground bud -- and the list goes on and on -- might provide McKinnon with some real examples. Or maybe tune in Jon Stewart, who has the craziest things to say about conservatives with a little "f-bomb" thrown in about every other sentence.

What a novelty: a political reporter who reports on the remarkable success of a political book.

Michael Calderone of Politico has been just about alone in reporting on the popularity of conservative radio host and author Mark Levin’s book, “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto.”

In his blog on September 15, Calderone wrote that “Levin has now sold a million copies of his latest book, Liberty & Tyranny, according to a release.” And Calderone noted that “‘Liberty & Tyranny’ spent 12 weeks at the top of the New York Times' best-seller list and remains in the Top Ten.”

Threshold Editions, part of Simon & Schuster, announced today that conservative radio host and author Mark R. Levin’s “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto” has officially sold one million copies since its release in March. No thanks to the mainstream media.

As the Culture and Media Institute detailed in a new Special Report “Unmentionable: Best Selling Conservative Books and the Networks that Ignore Them,” Levin’s book, which spent 12 weeks at No. 1 on the New York Times Best Sellers List, has been ignored by the mainstream media. Levin told CMI that “we have not heard from any of the major networks, and the only major newspaper that has interviewed me is Philadelphia Inquirer, and that’s because I’m from Philadelphia.”

Obviously, that hasn’t harmed sales. “The book is selling by word of mouth,” Levin said. “I’ve done very little media, and its chugging along.”

What follows is the executive summary of a New Culture & Media Institute Special Report (co-written by myself and Zoe Ortiz).

Since the 1940s, an appearance on The New York Times Best Sellers List has been the mark of commercial success for any book. Authors with titles on the list can count on media attention to help sell even more copies. Unless they are conservatives.

Conservative books and authors have been very successful recently, as evidenced by their showing on the best sellers list. Since January 2009, conservatives enjoyed 95 total weeks on the list, compared to just 80 weeks for liberal books and authors. At this writing Michelle Malkin’s “Culture of Corruption” is at No.1, and several other conservative titles have prominent berths on the list.

But as the Culture & Media Institute discovered, viewers of ABC, CBS and NBC might never know of the popularity and commercial success of conservative books.

Remember the man at Wednesday's Chicago Tea Party who took on the astoundingly incompetent CNN correspondent -- and Fox News wannabe! -- Susan Roesgen?

Well, it turns out he's a reader of NewsBusters.

On Thursday, Norman aka namron was Mark Levin's guest.

Early on in the interview, Norman said (audio available here h/t Hot Air):

Mark Levin's red-hot new book Liberty and Tyranny has an amazing list of media alarmism in the chapter on "Enviro-Statism." Levin says Dr. John Brignell, a retired professor of industrial instrumentation at the University of Southampton in Britain, compiled a list of alarmist claims  in news reports that man-made global warming has caused or will cause. Take a breath and peek. (The paragraph breaks are mine.)

Agricultural land increase, Africa devastated, African aid threatened, air pressure changes, Alaska reshaped, allergies increase, Alps melting, Amazon a desert, American dream end, amphibians breeding earlier (or not), ancient forests dramatically changed, Antarctic grass flourishes, anxiety, algal blooms, Arctic bogs melt, Asthma, atmospheric defiance, atmospheric circulation modified, avalanches reduced, avalanches increased, bananas destroyed, bananas grow, bet for $10,000, better beer, big melt faster, billion dollar research projects, billions of deaths, bird distributions change, birds return early, blackbirds stop singing, blizzards, blue mussels return, boredom, Britain Siberian, British gardens change, bubonic plague, budget increases, building season extension, bushfires, business opportunities, business risks, butterflies move north.

Has the federal government exceeded, or is it on the verge of exceeding its constitutional authority with the recent series of events connected to rescuing an ailing banking system?

Although Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., was ridiculed for raising that question in a congressional hearing on March 24, conservative talk show host, constitutional lawyer and legal commentator Mark Levin, told Fox News Channel's "Your World with Neil Cavuto" on March 24 that government was indeed exceeding the constitution. According to Levin, there is nothing in the Constitution that would allow the Obama administration to expand the government's ability to seize non-banking financial institutions as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has proposed.

"It's unbelievable," Levin said. "There is no constitutional authority for this. I thought the American people like capitalism. I mean look, we luxuriated in this society as a result of the market system."

In his newly released book ‘Liberty and Tyranny’ author Mark Levin criticizes the mainstream media for its systematic support of left-wing causes. In chapter 8, entitled "On Enviro-Statism," Levin focuses on the media’s slanted coverage of global warming and points out its confusion on the subject:

In 1975, scientists again raised the specter of global cooling. A famous article appearing in Newsweek magazine, titled "The Cooling World," concluded, "The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down."...In 2008, the same Newsweek that gave weight to the false science of global cooling published an article titled "Global Warming Is a Cause of This Year’s Extreme Weather."

Levin goes on to expose CBS’s Scott Pelley as a diehard global warming advocate:

Consider CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley. When asked why his reporting on global warming did not acknowledge the views of skeptics, he replied, "If I do an interview with Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier? This isn’t about politics or pseudo-science or conspiracy theory blogs. This is about sound science."

One of the highlights of the evening last night at the 2009 Media Research Center Gala and DisHonors Awards for yours truly was radio host Mark Levin, who served as an awards presenter.

With stinging humor, Mr. Levin zinged journalists and liberal pundits left and right -- or should I say lefter? -- so I took the liberty of taking some of the best lines and editing it down to a nearly 4-minute long video.

Click the embedded video at right to enjoy. An audio version is available here.

Talk-radio star Mark Levin was so impressed with Daniel Henninger’s Thursday column in The Wall Street Journal – "The Obama Rosetta Stone" – that he read the whole thing to his listeners on Thursday night. Henninger suggested Barack Obama watchers should not only read Obama’s two autobiographies, but the new Obama budget document, 141 pages, printed by the Government Printing Office. Henninger instructed:

Turn immediately to page 11. There sits a chart called Figure 9. This is the Rosetta Stone to the presidential mind of Barack Obama. Memorize Figure 9, and you will never be confused. Not happy, perhaps, but not confused.

Henninger pointed to the source of the chart's data: Piketty and Saez, from 2003. He suggests these names should be better known:

Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, French economists, are rock stars of the intellectual left. Their specialty is "earnings inequality" and "wealth concentration."

On Friday, radio host Mark Levin gave a shout out to NewsBusters's parent company the Media Research Center and its work via the Free Speech Alliance to fight efforts by liberals to resurrect the so-called Fairness Doctrine.

Transcript follows (h/t Kevin Eder):

MARK LEVIN: Tucson, Arizona, go.

CALLER: Thank you very much for taking my call, Great One. Listen, I just want to have a few words with you here to say I was raised a lib, and I understand how they work, and it's time to get out of our seats, into the streets.  And I will be protesting in front of my courthouse every Saturday from 7 to 9 about free speech and about, they do not have the right to take you or anyone else off of the air.

There's been a lot of news about Democratic senators supporting the reinstitution of the Fairness Doctrine. Last week Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said it was "absolutely time to pass a standard." Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, came out with a similar message, saying, "We need the Fairness Doctrine back."

However, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is serving as the voice of sanity in the debate and has pledged to lead a filibuster in the U.S. Senate against any attempt to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine. He appeared in an interview on Mark Levin's Feb. 10 radio show.

"Let me ask you this Sen. Sessions," Levin said. "If they try to make a run at talk radio, whether it's the local rule or diversity of ownership, or equal this or equal that - will you lead a filibuster among others to try and stop that?"

Note: This serves to at least partially answer ABC's David Wright's idiotic question.

Bob Bennett is a man of integrity, and the Democratic half of the political Bennett Brothers. He appeared last night on Mark Levin's nationally syndicated radio show to debunk the media myth built-up around Arizona Senator John McCain's role in the Keating Five mess circa the late 1980s and early 1990s.

(Brother Bill served as Secretary of President Ronald Reagan's Department of Education and Director of President George H.W. Bush's Office of National Drug Control Policy, and is now a nationally syndicated radio host in his own right, of "Bill Bennett's Morning in America.")

Bob Bennett is an attorney, and was at the time of the Keating Five scandal hired by the Senate Ethics Committee as Special Counsel to lead the investigation into what had happened. After over a year of exhaustive examination, Bennett recommended that Sen. McCain (and Sen. John Glenn of Ohio) be exonerated of all charges having to do with the Keating scandal. The ethics committee, which was majority Democratic, rejected Bennett's recommendation.

From the Washington Post's The Trail (by Michael Abramowitz), we have the following:

On Monday's Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann tagged conservative talk radio hosts Mark Levin and Sean Hannity as "lunatic right-wing" hosts, and Hannity as "not-so-smart." Responding to a recent joke Levin made on Hannity's radio show that the National Organization for Women is really the "National Organization of Ugly Women," Olbermann called Levin's show "psychotic" and charged that the conservative host "knows his ugly."

The MSNBC host's attacks on Hannity and Levin came during the Countdown show's regular "Best Persons" segment, which, contrary to its name, often includes people Olbermann means to be attacking, similarly to the show's "Worst Person" segment. Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Monday, September 8, Countdown show on MSNBC:

An extraordinary thing happened on Friday's "Countdown": host Keith Olbermann actually included a Democrat Congressman in his "Worst Person in the World" segment.

Of course, it would have been even more extraordinary if the MSNBC host had informed his viewers that the Congressman in question was indeed a Democrat.

Sadly, that didn't happen, and instead the million foolish people that actually watch this tripe were left in the dark concerning Bill Delahunt's (D-Mass.) party affiliation (video embedded right):

In case you missed it, the Supreme Court Thursday bestowed Constitutional rights to terrorists currently held at Guantanamo Bay.

As my colleague Brent Baker reported hours ago, the broadcast evening news programs predictably saw this decision as a stinging defeat for the Bush administration that could prove tremendously embarrassing to the president.

Almost prophetically, conservative radio talk show host and constitutional lawyer Mark Levin stated earlier in the day that reporters making such statements "are lying through their teeth. They are propagandists, spewing the talking points of the enemy."

Beginning his program Thursday, Levin took the Supreme Court to task for this ruling, as well as the predictable standing ovation from the media, crescendoing to the following conclusion that should be required reading for all Americans interested in the truth concerning this matter (ten minute audio available here, picture courtesy Radcity):

Yesterday we at NewsBusters noted how Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell is backing an effort to move an up-or-down vote on the Broadcasters Freedom Act (BFA), currently stalled in the House of Representatives. Later that evening on his June 11 radio program, conservative talk show host Mark Levin issued a warning- urge your congressman to support the Broadcasters Freedom Act, or you risk sitting idly by as liberals led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) annihilate free speech on America’s radio waves.

The BFA is a response to the expiration of last year’s one year moratorium of the Fairness Doctrine. That measure passed the House with a 309-vote majority. With so many members of Congress supporting free airwaves just one year ago, one might assume this year’s permanent defense of free speech would fly through the House. Yet the Democratic leadership is blocking the legislation from reaching the House floor for a fair vote because as Levin says "they know it will pass."

Below are Levin’s relevant remarks, audio available here:

For well over a year, NewsBusters has been reporting the media's almost romantic obsession with Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama.

This unprofessional infatuation eventually became so obvious that press members themselves have been openly discussing it for the past couple of months.

With this in mind, conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin absolutely skewered two of the most obvious Obama lovers during his program Wednesday, describing the "slobbering" that happens when "the news in this country is turned over to politicians, or the staffers of politicians."

Playing audio clips of NBC's Tim Russert and MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Levin accurately demonstrated how the sycophantic adoration exhibited by the press for the junior senator from Illinois during this campaign is a bias and a journalistic disgrace likely worse than anything Americans have ever witnessed concerning a presidential candidate.

Levin began his marvelous examination (ten-minute audio available here):

Two years ago, after FNC's Bill O'Reilly erroneously stated that American troops had massacred Nazi German troops at Malmedy, Belgium during World War II, even after the FNC host corrected the error, which apparently should have referred to American troops who retaliated against German troops after Malmedy because of that massacre, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, on his Countdown show, demanded that O'Reilly apologize to American troops, relaying anger expressed by some Iraq war veterans who heard about O'Reilly's mistake, and in one of his most egregious smears against the FNC host, painted O'Reilly as a defender of Nazis. The Countdown show even played an audio clip of voice actor Seth MacFarlane derogatorily calling the FNC host "that b*****d Bill O'Reilly," and telling the FNC host to "allow me to soil myself on you." (Transcripts follow)

It appears the New York Post's assessment that MSNBC's Keith Olbermann is on the verge of another professional meltdown was quite prescient.

On Monday's "Countdown," answering to criticism that his Special Comment last Wednesday about President Bush's "panoramic and murderous deceit" was so over the top that he should be suspended, Olbermann had the unmitigated audacity to claim those offended were showing "their instinctive hatred for, and contempt for" America's troops.

His targets: conservative commentators and stalwart supporters of the United States military including radio hosts Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin.

I kid you not.

What follows is the video of Olbermann's extraordinarily convoluted and Norman Bates-like explanation for his deplorable behavior last Wednesday as well as the transcript:

Conservative radio talk show host and Constitutional lawyer Mark Levin on Friday called for MSNBC to suspend Keith Olbermann as a result of his deplorable remarks concerning American soldiers and President Bush.

As my colleague Brad Wilmouth reported, Olbermann on Wednesday's "Countdown" "accused the President of 'panoramic and murderous deceit,' and of 'creating' an America that 'includes cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives.'"

This didn't sit well with Levin who on Friday gave Olbermann the tongue-lashing his employers at MSNBC would give him if they possessed any shred of decency or common sense (audio available here thanks to our friend Johnny Dollar):

Update (Ken Shepherd | May 9): Our good friend Mark Levin sent along an audio clip from his May 8 radio program wherein he addressed Jon Stewart's ludicrous comparison.You can access the audio here.

On Wednesday night’s edition of The Daily Show on Comedy Central, host Jon Stewart interviewed John McCain. As part of his ongoing outrage that the Reverend Wright issue would be raised against Barack Obama, Stewart sprung it on McCain that President Bush is his own Reverend Wright problem. He liked this “fascinating” analysis so much he repeated it, and suggested when it comes to Team Bush and al-Qaeda, “our policies are their Reverend Wright-- isn't he the guy they throw out there and inflame their base and get support? Don't you think he's actually been okay for al-Qaeda?” McCain answered by declaring the terrorists were a “transcendent evil” beyond one politician.

Stewart seemed to be citing an NBC poll (slightly wrongly) that found 32 percent of voters expressed concern about Obama’s relationship with Rev. Wright, but 43 percent were concerned by Sen. McCain’s relationship to President Bush. Stewart formulated his jokey question as if he were about to question McCain about being endorsed by harshly anti-Catholic minister John Hagee: