Kudos to Mark Levin

Conservative attorney, talk show host, judicial streetfighter and author of Men In Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America continues to enjoy brisk sales of said book. The Washington Post's headline on the linked article seems to express surprise and maybe even dismay, that such a book is selling so well:

Yet this publishing phenomenon has gone almost completely unnoticed outside conservative circles.

"The fascinating thing is that it's a bestseller on a subject where 100 percent of us who present ourselves as experts haven't read it," said David Garrow, a law professor at Emory University who has written widely on Supreme Court history.

"It's a classic case of a fired-up red-state America," said conservative talk-radio host Laura Ingraham, who has had Levin on her show. "It's a classic case where the mainstream media misses the boat of a whole segment of society that has a big, big problem with the courts injecting themselves into matters that should be left up to the people."

"Men in Black" was the brainchild of executives at Eagle Publishing Inc., the corporate parent of Regnery Publishing, a 58-year-old conservative house that published "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" during the 2004 presidential campaign.

In mid-2004, Eagle approached Levin, a former aide to President Ronald Reagan's attorney general, Edwin Meese III. Levin turned the book out in time for release Feb. 7.

"Our audience has been screaming for a book on the courts," said Jeff Carneal, president of Eagle Publishing. Carneal spoke at a recent Eagle-sponsored reception in honor of the book at Morton's, a downtown restaurant; the guest list included Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) and Theodore B. Olson, formerly President Bush's solicitor general, along with numerous lawyers, think tank staff members and lobbyists.

Carneal said the initial press run for "Men in Black" was 80,000 -- a large number for a nonfiction book -- and that Eagle has ordered 85,000 more copies in response to the demand. Company officials estimate that half of all the books printed so far have sold. The list price is $27.95 per hardback copy.

"Men in Black" offers a conversational but uncompromising version of a familiar conservative legal critique: that "judicial activists" on the bench frequently toss aside black-letter law or constitutional text in favor of their own policy preferences.

Levin unfurls his argument through chapters with titles such as, "Justices in the Bedroom," concluding the book with a call for judicial term limits and a congressional veto over the court's rulings.

"It's written in plain English and not for Harvard Yard," says Levin, who received a bachelor's degree at the age of 19 from Temple University and later graduated from law school at the same institution.

Levin says that he has done 150 to 200 interviews on talk radio, the vast majority on shows hosted by conservatives. He has appeared on Fox News -- but his book has not been reviewed in such major daily newspapers as the New York Times or The Washington Post.