Forgotten Freedoms

And now the most fascinating two minutes in television, the latest from the political grapevine:

Support Slightly Slipping

A new Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll shows the President's job approval rating is now tied for its second-worst since the 9/11 atrocities.

Fifty-two percent of Americans now approve of the President's job performance. That's down slightly from 53 percent at the end of last month.
 
Meanwhile, the president gets positive marks for his job on terrorism, with 57 percent approving, though that has come down since two months ago.

Still, only 46 percent of Americans approve of the way the president is handling the situation in Iraq, down from 54 percent two months ago.

Despite all this, the poll shows President Bush would beat Democratic presidential candidates Howard Dean, Wesley Clark and Dick Gephardt (search ) by identical margins in a head-to-head challenge, and the president does even better when up against Hillary Clinton.

Disaster Disagreement?

Speaking of presidential candidates, Dennis Kucinich (search ) says the military action in Afghanistan is now "disaster" in that not much has been won, but a new poll from Afghanistan shows Afghans don't necessarily agree.

According to the poll, 83 percent of Afghans surveyed say they feel safer now than they did three years ago, when the Taliban was in power.

And more than 75 percent of Afghans say Afghanistan will be even more safe in another year.

The poll, conducted in the more stable Afghan provinces by the Human Rights Research and Advocacy Consortium, also shows the number one step to peace, Afghans say, is disarming local warlords.

Saudi Support?

One week after Saudi Arabia said it "rejected all acts of terrorism... and [is] determined to... eradicate" them, a State Department commission now says Saudi Arabia is responsible for funding and exporting the extremist brand of Islam that stymies the effort to stop those terrorist attacks.

The Commission on International Religious Freedom, quoted in The Washington Times , says Saudi oil wealth funds the teaching of Wahhabism (search) -- an intolerant, puritanical form of Islam -- in Islamic schools and mosques around the world.

And Wahhabism, the commission says, is "incompatible with the war on terrorism."

Forgotten Freedoms

From the wonderful world of education, a new survey shows that a quarter of America's college students can't name even one freedom guaranteed them by the First Amendment (search).
 
What's more, the survey, conducted by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis, shows 70 percent of college students don't know freedom of religion is a right protected under the First Amendment.

— FOX News' Michael Levine contributed to this report