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Country music star Trace Adkins on Wednesday wore a tiny Confederate battle flag while singing on on NBC's nationally-televised Christmas tree-lighting special.

During his "Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire" performance, close-ups of Adkins clearly showed that his earpiece was covered with the flag of the Confederacy, which many consider to be a symbol of racism.

The display comes only weeks after President Barack Obama won re-election and the White House website received thousands of signatures on petitions from all 50 states requesting permission to secede from the union.

Last year, Adkins joined a campaign urging Congress to preserve Civil War battlefields because he said they "serve as monuments to what can happen when political wisdom fails and our differences are allowed to escalate beyond reason."

According to IMDB, the country music star is a life member of the Louisiana Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

"When the Yankees charged and the colors fell / Overton Hill was a living hell," Adkins sings in his 2005 single "Til the Last Shot's Fired."

"Say a prayer for peace for every fallen son / Set my spirit free, let me lay down my gun / Sweet Mother Mary I'm so tired / But I can't come home 'til the last shot's fired."

(h/t: AOL)

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Bill Maher gave some grief to the Sons of Confederate Veterans for their celebration of the 150 year anniversary of the Civil War.

The SPLC has more on their "celebration" -- Once Again, Racism Rears Up in the Sons of Confederate Veterans:

For much of the last decade, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) has been roiled by an internal civil war between racial extremists and those who want to keep the Southern heritage group a kind of history and genealogy club.

It’s beginning to look like the racists won.

First came the news, originally reported on this blog last August, that the SCV was planning a Feb. 19 march down Dexter Avenue here in Montgomery, Ala., to “CELEBRATE THE BEGINNING OF THE CONFEDERACY” and ensure that it “is remembered and portrayed in the right way.” What the SCV meant by “the right way” was made obvious by its website promoting the event, which insists that “the South was right!” and claims that “there is no difference between the invasion of France by Hitler and the invasion of the Southern states by Lincoln.”

And now, from the Mississippi Division of the SCV, comes this new gem: The group wants the state to issue a special license plate, keyed like the Montgomery march to the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, to honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest — a millionaire Memphis slave trader before the war, an apparent war criminal who presided over the massacre of surrendering black prisoners at Fort Pillow, Tenn., during it, and the first national leader of the Ku Klux Klan afterward, when the Klan’s terrorist violence paved the way to a Jim Crow South.

Neo-Confederate apologists in the SCV and elsewhere claim that Forrest has been mischaracterized, that he was a good man who disbanded the Klan when it became violent. Mississippi SCV member Greg Stewart told The Associated Press that Forrest had sought “Christian redemption” and ultimately rejected the Klan. “He redeemed himself in his own time,” he said. “We should respect that.”

That is false. Forrest, for all the fawning attention he’s received from the historical revisionists of the neo-Confederate movement, was certainly a brilliant and highly successful cavalry general — but he was also a homicidal bully.

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After Governor Haley Barbour refused to denounce the proposed Mississippi license plates commemorating a former KKK leader and Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, John King decided to bring in Sons of Confederate Veterans' Greg Stewart to defend his group's effort. And of course Mr. Stewart said this has absolutely nothing to do with slavery, or the Klan or racism. They're just wanting to honor this former Klan leader because of his military record in the Confederate Army.

That might be a little easier to swallow were it not for his group's recent history. David Neiwert wrote this about them after he found out that Joe "You Lie!" Wilson was a member -- Obama heckler Joe Wilson a member of neo-Confederate SCV, fought to keep Dixie flag flying in South Carolina:

Looking into the background of Rep. Joe Wilson, R-South Carolina, after his heckling of President Obama last night, I came across this:

Joe also has been a member of the Columbia World Affairs Council, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Sinclair Lodge 154, Jamil Temple, Woodmen of the World, Sons of Confederate Veterans, ....

This is an organization that, as the SPLC has detailed assiduously, has been taken over in the past decade by radical neo-Confederates who favor secession and defend slavery as a benign institution. Leading the takeover is a radical racist named Kirk Lyons, who's been an important legal figure on the far right for some years.* [More below]

Full transcript via CNN below the fold.

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So how does the media decide to handle Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's 'Confederate History Month' proclamation? Why trot out some racists who want to defend his original decision to ignore the issue of slavery of course. And what do all three of these interviews have in common? All three involve having someone of African American descent trying to argue with these Yahoos. First up we had Pat Buchanan on Hardball arguing that both sides were right in the Civil War and former DNC head Karen Finney. Finney posted this at Politico on the subject:

Gov. Bob McDonnell’s decision is shameful. If you’re going to declare April as “Confederate History Month” to commemorate, “… the Commonwealth’s shared history, to understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War, and to recognize how our history has led to our present;” then have the courage and character to embrace the full truth, not hide from or censor it. This is not about being “PC”. [...]

For me this is very personal. My father, who is African American, is from Virginia. The Finney name comes from the man who once owned my family as slaves. My mother, Mildred Lee, is the great, great, great niece of Robert E. Lee, or “the General”, as he is referred to by my family. I am therefore the great, great, great, great niece of General Lee. That is my American story, a mixed race heritage that I am proud of, just as Virginia, the South and our country has a mixed history.

I think it was shameful to make her sit through Buchanan's crap on Hardball. More from CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 and MSNBC TV below the fold.

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