While most of us are either slacking off at work this summer, biding our time between vacations there is a group of young folks over at Mark Strama's Campaign Academy learning about the insanity of Texas political campaigns. Eileen from ITPT and KT from BOR already went out and visited this group and today I spent some time with them. The group of interns have started their own blog about their experiences as interns and their impressions on working for a campaign. Oh how it took me back to those days when I, too, was interning and thinking about my fabulous future as big-time D.C. political consultant.

The group I met were not wide-eyed naive students forced to do something 'educational' this summer, they were eager, passionate, interesting and articulate. I was impressed that they were learning about 'media training' and messaging while I was there. No candidate I interned for ever took the time to spend time with me on that stuff, I had to pick it up on the fly. (And through tons of mistakes that nearly got me fired.)

To Mark's credit, he seems to engage his group with an energy that has to be left over from his days motiving the youth vote. While their blog is still finding its voice, I'll keep an eye on it to see these future politicos grow and mature.

I did ask Mark to provide me with a high-resolution photo from those long hair MTV days because we all know it begs for some photoshop contest.

So, while you're spending the summer drunk and floating the river go ahead and relax knowing that there are some young folks out there that are a lot better than you doing something worthwhile.