Black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes)
Watch the newsreaders' lips. That's what Deb Weiss wrote four years ago when Chris Lehane was doing "opposition research" on George W. for Al Gore:
Among his many talents, Lehane is something of a ventriloquist, immensely clever at throwing his voice so that it emanates from other mouths -- usually those of the network newsreaders.
A snarling ferret with a bottomless zest for the political smear, Lehane could well be the nastiest of the Gories (no small achievement, considering the competition). He has an instinct for the jugular, and he doesn't much care whose throat he's tearing open.
This time around, Drudge reports on a New York Times Page One piece today, the ferret has turned on his own kind:
At the center of the maelstrom, Democrats say, is a 36-year-old aide to Gen. Wesley Clark, "a frenetic, colorful and, some contend, devious" communications strategist named Chris Lehane, the Times will report.
Lehane, a veteran of Al Gore's 2000 campaign and the Clinton White House, has emerged as Clark's secret weapon.
Now, Lehane has become a target in a fight among Democrats about whether opposition research is going too far. With Clark rising in the polls in New Hampshire and Howard Dean facing a spate of negative news reports.
Mewled one Democrat who works for a rival campaign, "It's just that right now, he's doing it inside the family, as opposed to across the fence. And so it's received differently. He's spilling blood in our house."
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