Dueling Surveys

Over the weekend, a Newsweek survey showed much more disapproval of the latest NSA scandal than was revealed by the Washington Post's insta-poll last week:

Has the Bush administration gone too far in expanding the powers of the President to fight terrorism? Yes, say a majority of Americans, following this week's revelation that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone records of U.S. citizens since the September 11 terrorist attacks. According to the latest NEWSWEEK poll, 53 percent of Americans think the NSA's surveillance program "goes too far in invading people's privacy," while 41 percent see it as a necessary tool to combat terrorism.

The same poll put the president's approval rating at 35 percent.

Comments

[Jersey McJones]

What scares me is the consumer data company (what's their name again) that's in cahoots with the govt on this.

JMJ

[Soon-to-be Expat]

We got a company-wide e-mail today to use only VoIP when calling other offices within the company, due to concerns over trade secrets. I'm still waiting for the company to drop FedEx as our prefered carrier, now that we're almost ready to send out our customer support training DVDs to all our offices.

[Dusty]

What scares me is that pollsters -- and those they poll -- seem to unquestioningly accept questions about, say, the way Bush "is handling" gas prices.

And hey, "only 17 percent" approve of the way he's "handling" them. God knows it's a president's job to "handle" gas prices, among other crucial aspects of "the economy."

The wrongheaded premises that have seeped into America's thinking about its government are, yes, kinda scary.

[Douglas Fletcher]

As always, nobody asked me what I thought. Fuck the pollsters.

[Eric the .5b]

Excellent! This will totally kill Bush's chances for re-election.

...Oh.