Country music superstar and actor Trace Adkins will honor our troops with multiple performances during Fleet Week and the Memorial Day weekend.

Adkins activities include boarding the aircraft carrier USS Wasp to welcome the troops home for Fleet Week, performing a free concert for sailors at the Hard Rock Cafe located in Times Square, singing the "Star-Spangled Banner" to open a Freedom Dinner, performing aboard the USS Intrepid Air & Space Museum, and performing during the National Memorial Day Concert on the west lawn of the US Capitol.

Also appearing at the US Capitol will be Colin Powell (General, US Army, retired -- former Army chief of staff, and then Secretary of State under President G. W. Bush), actor and musician Gary Senise, and singer Natalie Cole among others.

Over the years of his very successful career, Trace Adkins has performed several concerts for troops in distant lands -- including combat zones.  Last year, Adkins was awarded the Bob Hope Award for Excellence in Entertainment by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.  Adkins is also a spokesman for the Wounder Warrior Project.

Having personally met Trace Adkins twice, I can say that he is a person that realizes the "bigger picture" -- even though his six-foot-six-inch frame creates a big picture himself.  (Both situations were unrelated to his music, and in both situations he demonstrated concern for people around him that were in difficult circumstances.)  His caring attitude toward our troops and our country comes across clearly in his performances.

Tom Kovach (rhymes with "watch") lives near Nashville, is a former USAF Blue Beret, and has written four books plus numerous columns for several online publications. While in the Air Force, he led two counter-terrorist teams, prevented an international incident (with Iran, relating to the embassy hostage crisis) and served on a presidential protection detail. Tom is an inventor, a horse wrangler, a certified paralegal, an actor, and former network talk-show host. He has also run for Congress, and is the national chairman of Veterans United to Save America. To learn more, visit: www.TomKovach.US.

Fri, 24 May 2012
(Note:  a technical glitch caused this post to disappear for two days.  It is being reposted on the 26th.)

Country music superstar Tim McGraw is launching a nationwide program called HomeFront in partnership with Chase and Operation Homefront to award mortgage-free homes to wounded warriors and servicemembers in need at each concert of his summer tour.

The home giveaways will begin this coming Memorial Day weekend, as McGraw performs a USO concert in New York City as part of the Fleet Week celebration.  At each of his 23 music tour stops this summer, McGraw will present a home to one warrior. On the news page of his fan club site, McGraw is quoted as saying, "My sister's a veteran of the first Gulf War. My uncle was a Vietnam veteran and my grandfather was a World War II veteran. I've always felt a deep sense of respect and obligation to our troops.  Being able to reward them for their dedicated work with a new home will be even more rewarding for us. It feels so good to give back to them, and to have the opportunity to entertain them on Memorial Day is something I'm honored to do."

A national nonprofit, Operation Homefront leads more than 4,500 volunteers across 22 Chapters and has met more than 590,000 needs of military families since its inception in 2002. A four-star rated charity by watchdog Charity Navigator, nationally, 94 percent of total revenue donated to Operation Homefront goes directly to assist service members.

Additionally, both ACM Lifting Lives, the charitable arm of the Academy of Country Music, and The Premier Group on behalf of the North Carolina Furniture Manufacturers, have made substantial contributions to support the program throughout the summer.

In October of 2010, this writer had the privilege of chatting with McGraw, albeit briefly, after an invitation-only presentation that he gave in Nashville.  I found him to be personable, even under a tight schedule.

Tom Kovach (rhymes with "watch") lives near Nashville, is a former USAF Blue Beret, and has written two books plus numerous columns for several online publications. While in the Air Force, he led two counter-terrorist teams, prevented an international incident (with Iran, relating to the embassy hostage crisis) and served on a presidential protection detail. Tom is an inventor, a horse wrangler, a certified paralegal, an actor, and former network talk-show host. He has also run for Congress, and is the national chairman of Veterans United to Save America. To learn more, visit: www.TomKovach.US.

In a surprising move -- given their penchant for compromise, even when they hold a majority -- House Republicans on the Armed Services Committee have approved a measure that would provide a "conscience clause" that upholds the rights of military members (especially chaplains) to speak out in opposition to recent rule changes that allow open homosexuals in the American military.

Given that the Republican Party often touts itself as the party of "family values", news of the legislation was notably absent from the roster of committee news releases.  The amendment passed on the same day that purported President Barack Obama publicly supported same-sex "marriage".

There was also no mention of the effort on the Defense Drumbeat blog -- the official outlet of the Republican-majority House Armed Services Committee (HASC).The amendment's sponsor, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), publicized the passage of the amendment on his official Web site.  The Air Force Times also reported the vote results.

Here is the actual text of the amendment.

Veterans United to Save America hopes that the amendment is not mere election-year posturing -- a "throwaway" measure that can be easily killed by the Democrat-controlled Senate.  Careers of military chaplains have already been threatened because they either spoke out against the new pro-homosexual regulations, or because they refused to speak up in support of the pro-homosexual regulations.  Both chaplains and non-clergy troops deserve the protection that a "conscience clause" would provide.

Feel free to sound off on this issue.

And remember that America's Party presidential candidate Tom Hoefling is the father of an Army combat veteran.  As president, Tom Hoefling would have the ability to undo the damage that Leftist social engineering has done to our military.  Speaking out against homosexuality would not be a crime if Tom Hoefling becomes the next commander-in-chief.

American Minute with Bill Federer

Paul Revere was captured along the way, but William Dawes and Samuel Prescott continued the midnight ride from Boston's Old North Church to warn the inhabitants of Concord that British troops were coming to seize their guns.

In early dawn, APRIL 19, 1775, American "Minutemen," as poet Emerson wrote, fired the "shot heard round the world" by confronting the British on Lexington Green and at Concord's Old North Bridge.

The conflict began that in eight years would end in independence.

New England celebrates this as "Patriots' Day."

Also on APRIL 19, in the year 1951, Five-Star General Douglas MacArthur retired from 48 years of patriotic service.

One of the most decorated soldiers in U.S. history, MacArthur served in France in WWI, was Superintendent of West Point and the youngest Army Chief of Staff.

General Douglas MacArthur was Supreme Allied Commander in the Pacific in WWII and received Japan's surrender.

He commanded UN forces against North Korea, but was dismissed by President Truman for not fighting a limited war.

Douglas MacArthur said:

"Like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who has tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty." 

The Washington Times

Ben Wolfgang

Edward Saylor still vividly remembers the Chinese boy who helped save his life. In the days after his plane crashed into the waters just off China’s coast, Mr. Saylor, now 92, and four other Doolittle Tokyo Raiders were desperate and hungry — but they had survived a daring mission that was America’s first military strike against the Imperial Japanese homeland, four months after the infamous sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

“The thought hits you, where you’re at, what you’ve got to do. … We don’t speak the language, what do we do now? That’s what was going through our heads,” said Mr. Saylor, one of the five survivors of the raid who will mark its 70th anniversary on April 18. The young boy helped Mr. Saylor’s crew navigate the Chinese countryside and helped scrounge up what little food he could find, just enough to keep the exhausted airmen moving.

After a weeks-long journey of more than 100 miles — all the while avoiding Japanese forces who had set up blockades of the Chinese coastline — the crew eventually was picked up by an American plane.

To this day, Mr. Saylor still feels a deep debt of gratitude to the young stranger, whom he never saw again.

“We owed him big time,” he said of the boy. “He was sure good for us.”

80 men who made history

Seven decades later, the five remaining survivors of the raid led by then-Lt. Col. James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle recognize their prominent place in history. Nothing like it had ever been done before. Nothing like it had ever been done before. But faced with an enemy that already had proved its ability to strike the U.S. homeland, 80 brave men volunteered for what had all the makings of a suicide mission,,,

Read this story at washingtontimes.com ...