If you've missed Rudy Giuliani's 9-11 exploitation ads or waited anxiously for Swiftboaters to start running some shadowy Bin Laden video, this 2008 Democratic primary is for you!

At the rate it's devolving, voters in South Dakota and Montana can look forward to Deal or No Deal getting interrupted by footage of Hitler at the Reichstag--with Obama.

It turns out the Ancient Greeks--inventors of Democracy--may also have invented the first smear tactic: the attack poem.

Don't laugh. Poetry was primarily spoken, not written, back then, and it was often recited publicly

A well-timed poetic assault in front of the right audience could do some serious damage to one's rival. Archilochus, a soldier and renowned poet in the 7th Century BC, had such a gift for these attacks that it's said he drove a rival--and his entire family--to hang themselves

His verse was nasty enough to get him banned from Sparta. Just how how nasty could Archilochus get?