Charlie Daniels

Very appropriate for this solemn day, we thought we'd share with you our good friend Charlie Daniels's moving recitation of  the late Red Skelton's exposition of the Pledge of Allegiance. You can watch it by clicking the play button below the page break:

In recent years I've come to know Charlie Daniels personally, enough so that I can say with confidence that this man just isn't looking for tributes. But for all that Charlie has done for this country and its fighting men and women, he deserves every honor that comes his way.

It was some thirty years ago when I first caught a Charlie Daniels concert.  He was the back-up to the Marshall Tucker Band at the old Capital Centre outside Washington DC, and that night, he stole the show. When he finished his blazing set the audience erupted and brought him back for an encore. When the Marshall Tucker Band finished their rather good performance, it made no difference: the capacity crowd roared for yet another performance from Charlie Daniels.

It's a metaphor for his life. At a time when he should, deservedly be disappearing into the shadows, he's back - with the crowd roaring once again.  Despite recovering from a stroke and nearing his 74th birthday, Charlie still plays about 100 concerts a year, including Sean Hannity's "Freedom Concerts" to benefit the children of our fallen and disabled U.S. soldiers through Ollie North's Freedom Alliance. So much has Charlie become ingrained in the "Freedom Concerts" (he performed in all eight shows this year) and in the effort to support our military worldwide that he deserves his own tribute. He is America's unsung singing hero.

In the summer of 2005 the Media Research Center (MRC) launched a pivotal project that would quickly transform the speed and breadth of exposing liberal media bias into real-time documentation: NewsBusters.org.

Within 24 hours, top talker Rush Limbaugh raved to his millions of listeners that "NewsBusters rocks" and today, five years later, the award-winning blog has become a hub for conservative media personalities who daily cite and source its work. 

The blog has authored more than 40,000 posts that have generated more than 1.2 million comments; produced the recurring political comedy showNewsBusted; and created a community of more than 40 around-the-clock contributing analysts including Charlie Daniels and other notables. NewsBusters has become the online clearinghouse for instantaneous evidence of liberal media bias and is backed by the MRC's gargantuan archive of more than 390,000 hours of broadcast and cable news recordings dating back to 1987. 

Country music legend and NewsBusters contributor Charlie Daniels recently suffered a mild stroke while vacationing in Colorado, CMT.com reported minutes ago:

Charlie Daniels suffered a mild stroke on Friday (Jan. 15) while snowmobiling during a vacation in Colorado. Daniels was treated at a medical center in Durango, Colo., after the stroke and was then airlifted to a Denver hospital, where he was released on Sunday (Jan. 17). He is recovering at his home in Colorado, where he has been on vacation since Dec. 27. No concert dates are expected to be canceled, according to his publicist.

Please keep Mr. Daniels in your thoughts and prayers.

First of all, let me wish you a happy and prosperous New Year, and I want to thank you all for reading this column and letting your thoughts be known by responding.

Whether your reaction to what I write be pro or con, it's always good to know what's on your mind, and I sincerely hope that you will continue to do so.

There is a great frustration abroad in America these days and goodness knows we have enough to be frustrated about; the economy, the two wars we are fighting, people walking unimpeded across our border from Mexico, a country that for all practical purposes is being controlled by a ruthless drug cartel.

The closing of businesses, the loss of jobs and the relentless cruelty of Islamic terrorists around the world all add up to a myriad of serious problems facing America today.

Although you will not hear it articulated in the mainstream media, I think what's bothering Americans more than any other single subject is the fact that we've lost control of our government.

There is one thing I very much want everyone who reads this to understand. Although I vehemently disagree with just about everything Barack Obama has done since he has been in office, and I really believe that he's digging a fiscal hole that this nation will be generations, if ever, digging out of, although I believe him to be a total socialist and just hate it when I have seen him bow to royalty around the world, I will write this piece with as much impartiality as I can, so that it will not be about the man or anything he has done in the past, but rather about the defense of this nation.

First of all, trying terrorists in America is nothing more than gross arrogance by our President and Attorney General.

The repercussions of a terrorist trial in New York could be so catastrophic that you don't even want to think about it.

The mainstream media has found little of alarm in the story, but conservative bloggers including musician Charlie Daniels have taken heed of the Obama administration's changes to the terminology the U.S. government uses to describe the war on terrorism. For example, "terrorism" will now be referred to as "man-caused disasters" and the Global War on Terror will now be referred to as "Overseas Contingency Operation."

Daniels, who performed at the 2003 Media Research Center Gala, pulls no punches in his March 27 post, where demonstrates the absurdity of the politically correct language deployed by the Obama administration: