Obama Appoints a Professional Dirt-Digger to the White House Counsel's Office

I'm not talking about actual dirt here (if I were she'd have to be in a union), but political dirt (from the Washington Times):

Amid the furor over controversies regarding Cabinet-nominee tax problems and the seismic battle over a nearly trillion-dollar economic rescue bill, President Obama made a little-noticed appointment that is now generating intrigue.

Shauna Daly, a 29-year-old Democratic operative, was named last month to the new job of White House counsel research director. Though she is inside one of the most powerful legal offices in the land, Miss Daly holds no law degree and doesn't list any legal training on her resume.

Her sole experience has been as an opposition researcher for Democratic political campaigns: She helped dig up dirt on rivals, or on her own nominee to prepare for attacks.

The addition to White House counsel Greg Craig's staff has alarmed some Republicans, who consider it a politicization of the office, and has irritated others who say that Democratic lawmakers who railed against Republican opposition researchers in legal positions in the past are now silent.

"Daly does not have the qualifications to be holding a significant position in the White House counsel's office," said Mark Levin, a conservative lawyer and radio-show host who worked in the Reagan White House and as chief of staff for Attorney General Edwin Meese.

"Her only qualification is that she knows how to dig up dirt on other people," he said.

Why do I get the feeling that before too long the differences between this administration and the paranoid way the Nixon White House was run will be indistinguishable?