By Dave Harrison

Even though the voting age is well-established, that doesn't mean you have to wait until age 18 before you can get involved in politics. Just earlier today, I experienced one of the coolest, most inspirational sights of this entire election while volunteering at the local Democratic Headquarters in Los Angeles.

Max and Jamie, two 13-year-old students from Lincoln Middle School in Santa Monica, California, both chose to volunteer their invaluable after-school time to Obama's campaign, making phone calls to voters in swing-state Nevada.

"We'll do anything we can for Obama," Max said. Well, unfortunately, voting for Obama is one thing they can't do — so instead, they got creative and found another valuable way to contribute. "[Jamie] lives right down the street, so we just had to volunteer. ... We talk about Obama all the time at school."

It's shocking to think that even in Obama's best-case scenario — a bid for re-election in 2012 — Max and Jamie still won't be able to vote for him. But after hearing them on the phones, they exhibited the same commitment as the lifelong Democrat sitting on my other side, who had shaken hands with Bobby Kennedy back in the day. So no matter who you will be supporting in November, let Max and Jamie serve as an example — even if you feel like your vote doesn't count (or if you can't vote!), your time and opinions can make a difference.

To find a local Democratic HQ, paste http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/**offices into your browser, replacing the ** with the two-letter abbreviation of your state.

Head here to find local events for Senator John McCain, then enter your ZIP code.

(by Bernard Lumpkin)

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but how much is a chyron worth? Apparently, for Fox News, a whole lot. During an interview Wednesday with conservative columnist Michelle Malkin about attacks against Michelle Obama, Fox News ran a graphic on the lower third of the screen that read, "Outraged Liberals: Stop Picking on Obama's Baby Mama!"

The comment — both crass and, for those who know anything about 21st-century slang, just plain wrong! — has set the political blogs abuzz. To those of us here in the Newsroom accustomed to using chyrons day in and day out in our on-air reporting, we thought we'd take this opportunity to draw your attention to the use (and abuse?) of this television tool.

News producers generally consider chyrons our friends. That informative text on the lower part of your screen allows us to feed you even more info — from sports scores to AP wire reports to upcoming programs — than what you're seeing and hearing on the upper two-thirds of the screen. Chyrons summarize, condense and crystallize. And in these times of short-attention spans, the quicker you can absorb the news the better. In other words, chyrons are meant to complement the story, not comment on it. Right?
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