The Art and Science of Polling

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

The president's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent and has dropped 8 points since last month. That's according to a new CBS poll in which just 30 percent approve of how President Bush is handling the war in Iraq and for the first time, most Americans say the president doesn't care about people like them.

The latest Rasmussen Reports poll also shows support for the president dropping over the past week, but his approval rating in that survey is 43 percent. Rasmussen all but perfectly forecast the outcome of the 2004 presidential election. So is there a reason the CBS poll is so much lower? Turns out, even after weighting their sample, 37 percent of respondents called themselves Democrats, compared to just 28 percent who said they were Republicans.

‘Amazed’ Over Report

President Bush says he was "amazed" at that “60 Minutes” story that used those now-discredited documents to attack his National Guard service calling the forged papers a conspiracy. Bush tells Washington Examiner reporter and FOX News contributor Bill Sammon that the online backlash against CBS marked "the beginning of a revolution in newsgathering."

Meanwhile, the president's top political adviser Karl Rove says the story proved that then-CBS anchor Dan Rather is "no serious reporter." Rove tells Sammon that Rather pushed the story because he believed he was playing a "determinative role in the presidential campaign" calling the report, "fundamentally unfair."

Smells Like Racism?

The emirate of Abu Dhabi in the UAE has seized more than 100 copies of a sixth-grade social studies textbook used for years at an upscale American school saying its lessons, "smell of racism." An education undersecretary tells the Khaleej Times that the book has a racist tone and is insulting to the country's religion and culture and blames the school for failing "to show respect to the religious sentiments of the host country."

So what were the offensive lessons? The book notes, "Israel is one of a few democracies in North Africa and the Middle East today. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Morocco are all kingdoms," and calls the Middle East one of the most dangerously explosive areas in the world.

Black Panther Boulevard

Chicago's City Council has approved a proposal to name a city street after a Black Panther leader and the city's police are none too happy about it. Alderwoman Madeline Haithcock sponsored the ordinance to rename a block of Monroe Street after former Illinois Black Panther party chairman, Fred Hampton, who advocated killing police officers and was himself gunned down in a police raid in 1969.

Fraternal Order of Police President Mark Donahue tells the Chicago Sun-Times, "It's a dark day when we honor someone who would advocate killing policemen." Alderwoman Haithcock now says if the change upsets Chicago police, she won't put up the sign.

— FOX News' Aaron Bruns contributed to this report