Poll Says Blair More Trusted Than Bush; Supreme Court Orders Poll Rewritten

WASHINGTON (CT) - The U.S. Supreme Court ordered an immediate rewrite to a new poll that found more Americans trust British Prime Minister Tony Blair than trust President Bush. In his majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that "further acceptance of the results of this poll would cause irreparable harm to the president; we can neither accept nor tolerate such results and are duty bound to change this poll." The Pew Global Attitudes Project poll found Bush's approval ratings dropping significantly across the globe, which led researchers to conclude that the world fears American power. White House lawyers then asked the court to step in, fearing Bush's poor showing might hurt his reelection campaign. The court agreed, splitting 5-4 along the same lines it split in Bush v. Gore in 2000, which gave Bush an electoral victory. Justice David Souter's dissenting opinion read as follows: "I don't know why I show up at these things anymore." The court's ruling found that Blair's approval rating of 83 percent would be lowered to 58 percent, while Bush's rating would rise to 97 percent. The court also ruled that approval ratings for all nine Democratic presidential candidates would be lowered to zero percent, which statistically means that even the candidates themselves are against their own campaigns. Approval ratings of French President Jacques Chirac and Senator Ted Kennedy will be lowered to negative eight billion percent each. Former Vice President Al Gore had proposed that the poll be redone by hand in several Florida counties, but Administration lawyers turned the suggestion down. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer happily told reporters that the decision "proves the system works; the court has no bigger fan than the president, believe me."Â? The complete ruling is in the Supreme Court's Archives, under case name Bush v. Earth.