Freedom's Watch [3], the right-wing advocacy group, recently hired Carl Forti [4], the former political director for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney [5], signalling that the group "is getting ready to gear up for Election 2008," reports Bill Berkowitz. Forti, a notorious mudslinger, was communications director at the National Republican Congressional Committee [6] from 2004 to 2006, turning it into what the the Annenberg Political Fact Check called an "attack-ad factory [7]" whose work "stands out ... for the sheer volume of assaults on the personal character of Democratic House challengers." Freedom's Watch has pledged to spend close to $250 million during the coming election cycle, but Berkowitz notes that several prominent staffers have recently left the group, including its co-founder, Bradley Blakeman [8], and Matt S. David [9], its communications director, amid "reported questions about the actual existence of the $250 million war chest that Freedom's Watch's leaders have boasted about." The group has also been criticized by some conservative activists as a "rootless organization built to capitalize on the Republican agenda" that "no doubt will raise and spend a lot of money and much of it will go to the PR company that organized it and for which they are a front [10]."