Markos Moulitsas was a bit surprised to hear he had been inducted into the Northern Star Hall of Fame. Not that there’s any question whether he deserves the honor. It’s just that he had stepped on so many toes – at NIU and everywhere since.

Markos, who graduated from NIU in 1996 with two bachelor degrees, is the founder and editor of the Daily Kos, one of the nation’s most influential political blogs. The Daily Kos, a potent blend of news and commentary from a largely liberal perspective, is visited each day by an average of 500,000 readers. In addition to his own daily postings, Markos provides posting privileges to dozens of other bloggers and political figures, including the likes of Sen. Ted Kennedy and Sen. John Kerry.

Markos was born in 1971 in Chicago, the son of a Salvadoran mother and Greek father. His family lived in El Salvador for four years, but fled back to Chicago in 1980 when threats on their lives were made by Communist guerillas.

Before attending NIU, Markos served four years in the U.S. Army as a rocket specialist. After NIU, he earned a law degree from Boston University School of Law. As editor in chief of the Northern Star in 1995, Markos questioned – in both news stories and editorials – the practice of spending student fee money on athletic programs, a campaign that offended many NIU administrators.

“Their argument was that sports made money for the school,” Markos wrote in a recent e-mail, “so I shot back, ‘Then why do you need our student fees?'”

“Then there’s the fact that I lost every battle I ever waged at the Star,” Markos continued in his e-mail, “most markedly efforts to save the journalism program and efforts to prevent the convention center from being built. Oh well. The lessons I learned in waging those fights have served me well in life. I graduated from fighting a corrupt university administration to fighting a corrupt White House and Democratic Party establishment.”

Markos moved to San Francisco, where he started the Daily Kos in 2002. He briefly flirted with political consulting, but now blogs full-time. He is co-author of the critically acclaimed book “Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics.” He is married and has a son, Aristotle.