David Drake

Rep. Brian Baird’s (D-Wash.) recent conversion on the Iraq war is beginning to affect more than the national dialogue. On Wednesday, liberal group MoveOn.org announced an ad campaign against the congressman in his own district.

Baird recently returned from a trip to Iraq and reversed his position on a withdrawal timetable, citing military progress in the four-year-old war.

MoveOn is calling the move a “flip-flop” and says it goes against the views of his constituents.

The ad does not make specific reference to Baird’s conversion. Instead, it features a soldier who served in Iraq talking about the amount of resistance troops encountered and at the end asks viewers to tell Baird to bring the troops home.

The soldier in the ad served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 and describes a scene from that time, long before the current troop increase that Baird has cited as the reason for military progress.

Baird voted against the war in 2003 and had opposed it until last month. Republicans have been quick to key on his remarks as evidence of progress in Iraq.

MoveOn disagrees, calling the war “unwinnable.”

“So far this has been one of the bloodiest summers in Iraq, and voters don’t want to continue down a failed path,” said MoveOn campaigner Nita Chaudhary. “They want representatives who will stand up to President Bush’s reckless policy and bring our troops home.”

Baird has represented a swing district in southwest Washington since 1998 but has not seen strong challenges in recent years. He has taken more than 60 percent of the vote in each of the last three elections.

LAUER: So I went through a litany there, and maybe I should start by stepping back. We've got two members out of 49 Republican senators in office right now embroiled in controversy. So do we have a party embroiled in scandal or do we have two bad apples?

DeLay wasted no time in confronting Lauer with his bias.

DELAY: Well, I hate to say this Matt, but you just showed the problem, the double-standard, and you just participated in it. You listed a whole lot of scandals that involve the Republicans but you didn't mention one Democrat.

In response, and throughout the ensuing exchange, Lauer clung to the fig leaf of his "bad apple" query.

LAUER: But you didn't hear me. I also just said do we only have two bad apples or is there a case of an entire party embroiled in scandal?

DELAY: I think in your premise if you had listed all the Democrats that are having problems right now it would have been different. You see the Democrats re-elect the people with their problems; the Republicans kick them out. If you look at what's going on, it's how you handle it as a party and as a political group.

And later . . .

DELAY: The double-standard in the media is amazing. The feeding frenzy, the sharks in the water that's going on right now because of a Republican. Where is the frenzy on Alan Mollohan from West Virginia or William Jefferson from Louisiana?

LAUER: I think you mentioned William Jefferson. There was an awful lot of coverage of William Jefferson when that story broke, congressman.

DELAY: Yeah, for just a couple of days and then we went on. In the case of a Republican, believe me I've experienced this, it's day in and day out in the media, and they write this story over and over and over again. We all know the double-standard in the media -- it's amazing.

LAUER: I'm not going to let it, you know, end with that assumption, congressman, because I clearly don't agree with it, but why don't we just say . . .

DELAY: You exhibited it, Matt!

LAUER: You know what, congressman? I think it's unfair. Because I listed a list of problems and then immediately --

DELAY: All Republicans.

LAUER: Well we're talking about the Republican party. You just said, I invited you on to talk about the GOP.

DELAY: Because you don't want to talk about the Democrats.

LAUER: And I also started, congressman, and then said "is this a misperception that there is a party embroiled in scandal when we may just have two bad apples?" That's exactly how I started my first question.

DELAY: No, you started the first question by listing a bunch of Republicans and didn't mention one Democrat.

LAUER: Because we're talking --

DELAY: About the situation that's going on in Washington today and including both Democrats and Republicans. There are scandals that need to be addressed. Republicans address them, Democrats re-elect them.

The former head of the Virginia chapter of the ACLU pled guilty last month in an Alexandria, U.S. District Court to child pornography charges. Despite Charles Rust-Tierney's high profile position and the incredibly vile material he regularly purchased, the mainstream press is as silent about his guilty plea as they were when he was arrested five months ago.

His plea agreement stated that the images of child pornography he downloaded were of "sadistic or masochistic conduct."

Rust-Tierney who was president of the Arlington, Va. Little League and also coached football and soccer, confessed that he had received over 850 pornographic images of children as young as four years-old. Police also discovered a six-minute video which depicted small children being sexually brutalized set to music by the band Nine Inch Nails. He ordinarily viewed the disgusting images on a computer located in his 10 year-old son's bedroom.

The ACLU president used his credit card to buy the material from various child pornography websites on many occasions, for which he paid a total of $420. At some point Rust-Tierney must have been worried that his kiddy porn funds were dwindling, because court documents showed that Rust-Tierney e-mailed a website asking for free access to a video which sold for $100. To his sickening delight, the webmaster complied and sent him a free link to the material.

Prosecutors have been able to identify more than 30 individual child victims shown in the images collected by Rust-Tierney. The pictures and videos were produced overseas as well as inside the United States.

Rust-Tierney faces up to 20 years in prison for his crimes. However, in a deal with his attorneys, prosecutors have agreed to ask for a prison sentence of 8 to 10 years.

In addition to his duties with the ACLU and the Little League, Rust-Tierney worked in the Washington D.C. Public Defender Service. Another frightening bit of information on this monster is that since 1990, he has worked exclusively with mentally ill defendants. It is not a tremendous leap to assume that someone of his character would sexually exploit people with diminished mental abilities, just as he enjoys exploiting children.

So why has the press chosen to ignore this story?...Could it be because the ACLU often fights for the ability of sexual deviants to exploit and indoctrinate children, and the MSM does not want more Americans to connect the dots on that terribly harmful and perverse organization? The ACLU continues to defend the North American Man Boy Love Association, a group dedicated to grown men raping little boys...However, you can bet the farm that you will never see NBC's Chris Hansen exposing the child predators of the ACLU!

The one excuse that the liberal press will use for not going after Rust-Tierney and the connection between child molesters and the ACLU, is that Rust-Tierney was not the president of Virginia's chapter at the time of his arrest (His term lasted from 1993-2005.). However, that argument is nullified by the fact that he remained an active member of the group's board of directors, he resigned that position the day he was arrested in February.

It is obvious that the liberal press is always willing to protect their own, even at the expense of innocent children.

- Dave Gibson

"We at least ought to hear his [Larry Craig's] side of the story.," said Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, like McCain a presidential contender who spoke on CNN.

Before revisiting the site of the collapsed Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis, the St. Paul Democrat said, "over the past 20 years, we have not been reinvesting in infrastructure... the way we need to support the common good of our country. The bill's coming due."

Asked how she would pay that bill, McCollum replied, "I believe we need to look at the gas tax."

She didn't say how large a gas tax increase she would support...

15 minutes into the opening of his program:
"Maybe Larry Craig's wife sticks by him because she doesn't want to go out and get a job."

14 minutes into the second hour of his program:
"Maybe [Mrs. Craig] goes along with this because she's looking forward to the retirement."

16 minutes into the third hour of his program:
"She's a fool to go along with this."

28 minutes into the third hour:
"[Mrs. Craig] is an idiot for staying with him. She's dumb."

Speaking to machinists in Florida today, John Edwards said he'd expect Americans to sacrifice their inefficient cars, and specifically to give up their SUVs, AP reports.

But campaigning turns out to be a pretty high-carbon practice. All the candidates ride around, particularly in Iowa, in big cars — Hillary rode an 18-wheeler; Obama rented an RV; and Edwards, whose convoy is often mini-van centric, had this Cadillac SRX Crossover (15 mpg) beside him in Iowa on his arrival from announcing his candidacy for president in New Orleans, according to his Flickr stream.

[...]

Edwards spokesman Eric Schultz says [the Edwards family buys] carbon offsets for the vehicles, and adds:

"John Edwards believes that all Americans need to be patriotic about something other than war, and that means conserving at home, at work, and in the cars they drive.

Media Research Center analysts reviewed all 517 campaign segments on ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS’s The Early Show and NBC’s Today from January 1 through July 31. Those three broadcast morning shows draw nine times the audience of their cable news competitors, and are geared toward everyday voters, not political junkies. These programs are therefore a prime battleground in each campaign’s quest for positive media attention.

The results are astonishing:

* The networks offered nearly twice as much coverage of the Democrats. More than half of all campaign segments (284, or 55%) focused on the Democratic contest, compared with just 152 (29%) devoted to the Republicans. The remaining stories either offered roughly equal discussion of both parties or did not focus on the major parties.

* All three Democratic frontrunners received more attention than any of the top Republican candidates, with New York Senator Hillary Clinton receiving the most coverage of all.

* Undeclared liberal candidates such as former Vice President Al Gore and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg received more network TV attention than many of the declared Republican candidates.

* The network morning shows doled out nearly three times as much airtime (4 hours, 35 minutes) to interviews with the various Democratic campaigns. In contrast, the Republicans received just 1 hour and 44 minutes of interview airtime.

* In their interviews with the candidates, the network hosts emphasized a liberal agenda. Of the substantive questions that could be categorized as reflecting a political agenda, more than two-thirds (69%) of the questions to Democrats reflected a liberal premise, and more than four-fifths (82%) of the questions to Republicans came from the same perspective.

* The top Democratic candidates received much more favorable coverage than their GOP counterparts, with Senator Clinton cast as "unbeatable" and Illinois Senator Barack Obama tagged as a "rock star." The most prominent Republican, Arizona Senator John McCain, was portrayed as a loser because of his support for staying the course in Iraq.

* Not once did network reporters describe Senator Clinton and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards as "liberal," while ABC only once labeled Obama as "liberal." Yet the networks showed no hesitation in attaching the "liberal" label to Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, who was so branded 12 times.

Monday, August 27
Program: America at a Crossroads
Description: The Anti-Americans (a hate/love relationship): estrangement between Europeans and Americans; how other countries respond to American culture and society.

Tuesday, August 28
Program: Nova
Description: "Storm That Drowned a City": A minute-by-minute, eyewitness account of hurricane Katrina; why the flood defenses failed.

Wednesday, August 29
Program: Masters of the Arctic Ice
Description: Researchers try to determine how global warming is affecting the Arctic world.

Program: Emperors of the Ice
Description: The emperor penguin is the largest diving bird on the planet, and the only species to breed during the Antarctic winter.

Program: Wide Angle
Description: "The Dying Fields" - Crop failures, sinking global cotton prices and spiraling debt drive farmers to suicide at the rate of one very eight hours in the Vidarbha region of India.

The defense for former astronaut Lisa Nowak has filed notice that it may claim she was temporarily insane when she accosted a romantic rival and shot pepper spray at her, court documents say.

Nowak, 44, allegedly stalked Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman and drove hundreds of miles from Texas to Florida before accosting Shipman at Orlando International Airport in February.

Her attorneys filed notice of intent to rely on an insanity defense in Florida's Orange County Circuit Court on Monday. It was unsealed Tuesday.

The court papers lay out a virtual laundry list of mental health diagnoses. Chief among them were obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, insomnia and a brief psychotic disorder.

[...]

Nowak has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted kidnapping with intent to inflict bodily harm, battery and burglary of a vehicle using a weapon. Her trial is to begin next month. If convicted, Nowak could face a sentence of up to life in prison.

Police have said Nowak wore diapers to avoid stopping during the 900-mile drive from Houston, Texas, to Orlando. She allegedly went to the airport early February 5, donned a wig, glasses, hat and raincoat, and followed Shipman from baggage claim to the parking lot.

Aling Cuban leader Fidel Castro is tipping Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and BarackObama to team up and win the U.S. presidential election.

[...]

"The word today is that an apparently unbeatable ticket could be Hillary for president and Obama as her running mate," he wrote in an editorial column on U.S. presidents published on Tuesday by Cuba's Communist Party newspaper, Granma.

[...]

Castro said former President Bill Clinton was "really kind" when he bumped into him and the two men shook hands at a U.N. summit meeting in 2000. He also praised Clinton for sending elite police to "rescue" shipwrecked Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives in 2000 to end an international custody battle.

But even Clinton was forced to bow to Miami politics and tighten the U.S. embargo against Cuba in 1996, using as a "pretext" the shooting down of two small planes used by exile groups to overfly Havana, Castro wrote.

He said his favorite U.S. president since 1959 was Jimmy Carter, another Democrat, because he was not an "accomplice" to efforts to violently overthrow the Cuban government.

A long-suppressed internal CIA report on pre-9/11 failures includes important new information about intelligence community squabbling and government fumbling in the months before the terror attacks.

An executive summary of the report, prepared by the agency’s inspector general’s office in 2005 and finally released Tuesday under orders from Congress, is unquestionably embarrassing for former agency director George Tenet and many of his top deputies. According to the report’s findings, the CIA under Tenet’s leadership repeatedly blew opportunities to disrupt the Al Qaeda network—and possibly even penetrate the 9/11 plot itself—because of “mismanagement,” a lack of strategic direction and a “systemic breakdown” within the agency’s Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC).

But some of the fresh details found in the document could also prove awkward for current CIA Director Michael Hayden—the only senior official involved in pre-9/11 events who is still in a leadership role. The report also seemed to raise new questions about former President Clinton’s angry claim to Fox News anchor Chris Wallace last year that he had authorized the CIA to “kill” Osama bin Laden—a directive that the report suggested was more ambiguous and limited than Clinton asserted.

The report found that U.S. counter-terrorism efforts against Al Qaeda were damaged by a fierce turf battle between the CIA and the National Security Agency (then under Hayden’s leadership) over access to transcripts of intercepted communications picked up by the government’s spy satellites and listening posts. Throughout the late 1990s right up to 9/11, the two U.S. intelligence agencies appear to have sharply feuded over the issue. The NSA eavesdropped on the conversations of top Al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the globe. It then prepared verbatim written transcripts of this raw “signals intelligence” (known as SIGINT in the intel world).

But Hayden’s NSA apparently wouldn’t share the transcripts with the CIA, which was responsible for tracking Al Qaeda operatives overseas. The NSA’s “unwillingness to share raw SIGINT transcripts with CIA…made it more difficult for CTC [the Counter-Terrorism Center] to perform its mission against Al Qaeda,” the report stated. (The NSA also snubbed the FBI, whose job it was to hunt down terrorist operatives within the United States.)

[...]

Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee complaining that the NSA would only provide his office written “summaries” of the Al Qaeda conversations, which were “much less” useful for operations than the actual transcripts. The NSA repeatedly rebuffed CIA requests to see the transcripts, Scheuer wrote. One senior NSA officer, he claimed, told the agency that the National Security Act of 1947 gave the NSA “control” over the raw signals intelligence and she therefore would not share it with any other branch of the government. “They were stonewalling us,” Scheuer said in an interview Tuesday. “We came back and told Tenet that people were going to die without these things.” A one point, Scheuer told NEWSWEEK, the agency's bin Laden station lost out on a chance to capture a senior Al Qaeda leader visiting Holland because the NSA provided its summaries of SIGINT too late.

[...]

The CIA’s CTC bungled key intelligence about 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, never focusing on reporting that he was sending terrorists to the United States on bin Laden’s behalf, the report stated. And the report lambasts the CTC for failing to share key information about two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who had been discovered to have entered the United States after being observed by the CIA attending an Al Qaeda summit in January 2000. [Ahem...January 2000...was George Bush in the White House then? - Drake].

[...]

The report also criticized intelligence problems when Bill Clinton was president, detailing political and legal “constraints” agency officials felt in the late 1990s. In September 2006, during a famous encounter with Fox News anchor Wallace, Clinton erupted in anger and waived his finger when asked about whether his administration had done enough to get bin Laden. “What did I do? What did I do?” Clinton said at one point. “I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since.”

Clinton appeared to have been referring to a December 1999 Memorandum of Notification (MON) he signed that authorized the CIA to use lethal force to capture, not kill, bin Laden. But the inspector general’s report made it clear that the agency never viewed the order as a license to “kill” bin Laden—one reason it never mounted more effective operations against him. “The restrictions in the authorities given the CIA with respect to bin Laden, while arguably, although ambiguously, relaxed for a period of time in late 1998 and early 1999, limited the range of permissible operations,” the report stated. (Scheuer agreed with the inspector general’s findings on this issue, but said if anything the report was overly diplomatic. “There was never any ambiguity,” he said. “None of those authorities ever allowed us to kill anyone. At least that’s what the CIA lawyers told us.” A spokesman for the former president had no immediate comment.)

[..]

Tenet made clear in a statement issued Tuesday that he was not happy about it. In a contentious two-and-a-half page statement e-mailed to journalists, he disputed many of the inspector general’s findings and vigorously defended his record. “There was in fact a robust plan [to get bin Laden’s terrorists], marked by extraordinary effort and dedication to fighting terrorism, dating back to long before 9/11,” he said. [Sure George, sure... - Drake].

[...]

Nor apparently was Hayden enthusiastic about so much dirty linen being made public. In his own statement e-mailed to reporters, the CIA director said he was releasing the report only because he had to.

Iraqi Shia, Sunni and Kurdish leaders have signed a reconciliation deal, Prime Minister NouriMaliki says.

The accord was the second step towards rebuilding Iraq's political process, Mr Maliki said, after four Kurdish and Shia parties formed a new alliance.

A committee formed by the parties had "accomplished some solutions", he said.

Mr Maliki has been criticised in recent days by US politicians, but the White House hailed Sunday's deal as "an important symbol" of unity in Iraq.

"We congratulate Iraq's leaders on the important agreement reached today in Baghdad... [and] their commitment to work together for the benefit of all Iraqis," said a statement issued from President George W Bush's Texas ranch.

'Sense of movement'

Issues under discussion between Iraqi politicians include holding provincial elections and easing a ban on former Baath party members in the civil service and military.

After the meeting, Mr Maliki appeared at a news conference alongside Iraqi President JalalTalabani, Sunni Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi, Shia Vice-President Adel Abdul-Mahdi and Massoud Barzani - president of the Kurdish region.

But nothing suggests that the rebuilding of a broad-based government is necessarily any closer, the BBC's Mike Wooldridge in Baghdad says.

Mr Hashemi said he had taken part in the talks as vice-president but did not indicate his Iraqi Islamic Party was about to join the moderate Shia-Kurdish alliance.

The news conference seemed intended more to give a sense of movement than to convey the substance of significant agreement, our correspondent adds.

The deal has been pushed by the US as a key step on the path to national reconciliation in Iraq.

Surge report

Earlier on Sunday, Mr Maliki hit back at senior US politicians who have called for him to be removed from office, singling out senators Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin.

He said the Democratic senators were acting as if Iraq was "their property" and that they should "come to their senses" and "respect democracy".

The National Enquirer and Star magazine are exclusively reporting that Owen Wilson tried to commit suicide on Sunday and has now been transported to St. John’s hospital in Santa Monica. Police and ambulance responded to a 911 call from Wilson’s house in Los Angeles on Sunday early afternoon.

[...]

A family member discovered the star and made the call. Sources tell the magazines that Wilson sliced his left wrists and took an indeterminate amount of pills. The Enquirer says that Wilson’s wrist was stitched and bandaged at the hospital, and that Wilson would “be detoxed.”

"I respectfully ask that the media allow me to receive care and heal in private during this difficult time," Wilson, 38, said in a statement.

Less than 48 hours after classes began at the nation's only Jewish-oriented charter school, officials in Broward County, Florida, issued a command of their own: Thou shalt not teach Hebrew, at least for the time being.

The Ben Gamla Charter School ignored the ruling for one day, then decided to cooperate with the Broward County School Board even though Ben Gamla's founder, former Democratic congressman Peter Deutsch, said his school was operating strictly by the book.

"I had to literally run around school yesterday telling the Hebrew teachers not to teach Hebrew," said Deutsch.

He insisted that there's a great deal of confusion over what is being allowed and what's not.

"The school board says we don't have a contract at this point in time. We say we not only have a contract that allows us to teach Hebrew, but a contract that obligates us to teach Hebrew."

Nevertheless, Deutsch said that he and the superintendent of schools, James Notter, want exactly the same thing: a Hebrew-English curriculum with no religious content.

"It can't be religious that would be unconstitutional," said Deutsch.

By definition, charter schools are publicly financed elementary or secondary schools that are managed privately, with minimal input from local school boards, and whose innovative teaching methods are expected to produce higher academic results.

Ben Gamla's supporters were told months ago that the school would be forbidden from teaching Torah or prayer its original proposal was soundly rejected by school board members on the grounds that overt Jewish symbolism would be involved.

But the teaching of Hebrew as a foreign language was far less controversial and never emerged as a bone of contention until now.

Keith Bromery, spokesman for the school board, said it's possible Hebrew-language instruction may resume on September 11, following the board's next meeting.

"We're not saying they can never teach Hebrew again. It's just a temporary suspension," he said.

"We want to bend over backwards to make sure there isn't any proselytising going on, other than casual references to religion. We are ultimately responsible for insuring there's separation of church and state."

Margaret Schorr, a marketing and public relations consultant, wanted her 5-year-old daughter, Hannah, to learn Hebrew, but she wasn't willing to pay the $8,000 to $13,000 annual tuition that Jewish day schools in south Florida typically charge for kindergarten.

For attorney David Barnett, price wasn't the issue -- he wanted his daughter in a more diverse environment.

Both families are set to take advantage of a groundbreaking option: the nation's first Jewish-oriented charter school.

When the school year starts Aug. 20, Schorr's daughter and Barnett's daughter will be among the 430 or so students attending the new Ben Gamla Charter School in Hollywood, Fla. The taxpayer-funded institution says it will offer two hours of instruction a day in Jewish-related topics but not religion.

Not a single class has been taught, but the school is generating controversy among the estimated 240,000 Jews living in Broward County, which also has one of the nation's largest concentrations of Israelis.

[...]

Some critics, on the other hand, worry that the school's main contribution will be to serve as a road map for religious communities seeking to lower the wall separating church and state.

"In other countries, we Jews were forced to support religious institutions of the dominant religions," said Rabbi Allan Tuffs of Temple Beth El, a Reform congregation in Hollywood. "The Jewish community has succeeded in America, largely thanks to the principle of separation of church and state."

"But with charter schools like Ben Gamla, we are opening the door for public money to be used to support all sorts of religious ideologies across America," Tuffs warned. "What will we say to the imam down the street who says he wants to teach Arabic within an Islamic cultural setting? Or the fundamentalist Christian group that wants to start a school to teach Christian culture?"

By definition, charter schools are publicly financed elementary or secondary schools that are managed privately, with minimal input from local school boards, and whose innovative teaching methods are expected to produce higher academic results.

A magazine owned by a millionaire friend of Nicolas Sarkozy doctored a photograph of the French president to remove his "love handles", it has been claimed.

Paris Match, the celebrity weekly owned by the media mogul Arnaud Lagardere, was said to have applied a computer air brush to the image of Mr Sarkozy to get rid of the unsightly bulges of fat around his waist.

On the campaign trail, Republican presidential candidates have been pointing to the absence of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 2001 as proof that the Bush Administration and GOP are following the right course in fighting terrorism.

But now comes another candidate to declare that if there were, god forbid, another attack prior to the 2008 election, that would also help the Republicans. The speaker? Hillary Clinton, who used that presumption to make a case for herself as the Democratic nominee.

Addressing voters in Concord, N.H. yesterday, Clinton said her experience would help her "handle things I have no control over" in the general election. "It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself 'What if? What if?,' " she went on. "But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world. So I think I'm the best of the Democrats to deal with that as well."

Her comments sparked outrage on left-leaning blogs, where critics accused her of conceding a key Republican talking point without a fight and blithely accepting a Karl Rove-like framing of the terrorism debate. A Democratic candidate, bloggers argued, should be able to confidently make the case that another terror attack might suggest mistakes in the Bush and GOP approach to fighting terrorism, instead of just accepting the assumption that any threat to national security causes voters to run to Republicans.

A new Gallup Poll finds Congress' approval rating the lowest it has been since Gallup first tracked public opinion of Congress with this measure in 1974. Just 18% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, while 76% disapprove, according to the August 13-16, 2007, Gallup Poll.

That 18% job approval rating matches the low recorded in March 1992, when a check-bouncing scandal was one of several scandals besetting Congress, leading many states to pass term limits measures for U.S. representatives (which the Supreme Court later declared unconstitutional). Congress had a similarly low 19% approval rating during the energy crisis in the summer of 1979.

Americans' evaluations of the job Congress is doing are usually not that positive -- the vast majority of historical approval ratings have been below 50%. The high point was 84% approval one month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when Americans rallied behind the federal government. Since then, Congress' approval ratings have generally exhibited the same downward trajectory seen in those for President George W. Bush. Currently, 32% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing as president, a far cry from the record-high 90% he received in September 2001. Bush's current job approval rating is just three percentage points above his lowest.