The University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center's FlackCheck.org has just made my month.

They've applied the art of the modern political attack ad to Abraham Lincoln's 1864 presidential campaign:

What's truly great about the video is that it illustrates just how partisan the media really was before the consolidation of the media establishment in the twentieth century, and how we've essentially come full circle in our political rhetoric. The Illinois State Register calling Abraham Lincoln "a second Benedict Arnold" for his refusal to support the Mexican-American War seems to me to in roughly the same ballpark (albeit worse) than Rick Santorum saying JFK makes him want to "throw up."

Check out the whole series of attack ads (ten so far!) at FlackCheck.org.