Free Republic

Hag's Editorial My closest buddy in 1951, had just got out of the Marine Corps, because they found out he was to young to be a Marine. Besides that, he received an undesirable discharge for whippin' his sergeant. He wanted to reenlist because he was now 18. He straightened up his past don't you see. I was 14 and we thought it might be better to change our names. We enlisted under the names of Bobby Eugene and Roy Leslie Davis. Point being we wanted more than anything to be Marines during the Korean conflict. My older brother James L...

<p>NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- A new Merle Haggard song that's critical of the media's coverage of the war in Iraq is garnering so much attention that it's being rushed to thousands of radio stations around the country, a spokesman for the country singer said Thursday.</p>

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Twenty-five years ago, a bill like this one would have been inconceivable. Merle Haggard, the one-time king of country, supported by an all-black gospel vocal group and a Dylan/Woody protege from Brooklyn -- ha! But in 2002, legendary and American-rootsy is a wide spectrum, and these three acts are compatible in that all uphold venerable traditions -- that, and most of their kudos come from somewhere besides the radio, which doesn't play them very much if at all. In the case of the headliner, country radio's almost total blackout on the man who had more hits in ...

The Anti-Anti-American By WALTER KIRN In the fall of 1983 I enrolled at Oxford University on a prestigious two-year fellowship meant to promote international understanding. Naturally, I expected a warm welcome. With my newly minted diploma in English literature, my German, French and Spanish pocket dictionaries and my made-in-Scotland tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, I considered myself an apprentice global citizen. Yes, I'd grown up in small-town Midwestern America, where I'd gobbled Big Macs, driven pickups and handled firearms, but I'd overcome those limitations. I'd studied Hegel. I'd signed petitions for Greenpeace. I knew what Dadaism was. But none...

Filed at 1:33 p.m. ET LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Country music legend Merle Haggard believes he may have been one of the patients who received unnecessary procedures at a Redding hospital, which FBI agents raided last week. Federal authorities are investigating whether Dr. Chae Moon, director of cardiology at Redding Medical Center, and Dr. Fidel Realyvasquez Jr., chairman of the center's cardiac surgery program, ordered costly surgeries for healthy patients and then billed Medicare. Neither physician has been charged. Haggard, 65, returned home to Redding after being on tour and found the town in an uproar over the allegations. The...