Yesterday, I had the insightful opportunity of attending the annual Campus Progress National Conference in Washington, DC. Similar to YP4, Campus Progress recognizes, challenges, and celebrates the young progressives to bring out positive social change.

I've attended my share of "progressive" conferences. The night before, I usually think about what kind of people might I expect to be participating in this year's conference. Questions like, how do the conference planner select this year's participants, or what are the participants' respective experiences and interests with regards to the progressive movement, usually come to mind.

In today's issue of the New York Times was an article, "Obama Goes One on One, Battling 'Just a Speechmaker' Label" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/us/politics/15campaign.htm...). The article goes on to discuss Obama's goal of interacting with voters on a more intimate level. As I reflected on the content, I thought about the reasons behind the shift. Why do we, as active voters, exercise our right the way we do?

Earlier this week I posted a letter to Secretary General Kofi Annan, urging him to send aid to Miami, which according to Rep. Tom Tancredo has become a Third World country because there are a lot of people that speak Spanish there.

I was confident that of all the rhetoric tossed around in the immigration debate, Tancredo's comments would take the prize for the dumbest of the year (and there were a lot of dumb comments). However, less than two weeks before the New Year, Virgil Goode (R-VA) announced that allowing elected congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) to take his oath of office using the Koran, would spur a wave of illegal Muslim immigrants intent on running for office and using the Koran to pledge their allegiance to the Constitution.