President Barack Obama's job approval rating has dipped below 50 percent nationally for the first time, as Americans worry about the war in Afghanistan, a new poll released Wednesday found.

The Quinnipiac University poll showed 48 percent of Americans approve of the way Obama is handling his job as president, compared to 42 percent who disapprove.

The president also scored low marks from Americans on his handling of the situation in Afghanistan, with just 38 percent saying they approved of his approach, but a majority did say it was the "right thing" for US troops to be in the country.

A dark chapter in the history of the Watergate scandal surrounding former President Richard M. Nixon might soon be uncovered.

The National Archives announced today it will use forensic documentation technology to try and uncover the contents of two pages of handwritten notes taken by Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman.

The notes were taken June 20, 1972, during a conversation between the president and Haldeman, three days after the infamous 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee's offices in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. The discussion between Nixon and his chief of staff was captured by the president's secret White House recording system, except for an 18 1/2-minute gap where the tape was later erased.

It was a day for lurid details Tuesday as authorities in El Dorado County began a multi-day hearing to determine if a 14-year-old El Dorado Hills girl should stand trial as an adult in the slaying of her mother, Joanne M. Witt, 47.

Tylar Marie Witt and her boyfriend, Steven Paul Colver, 19, are charged with killing Joanne Witt on June 11 or 12 after the mother filed a statutory rape report against Colver and kicked him out of her house.

Testimony by investigators Tuesday depicted a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship. The saga ended, authorities allege, with the mother's stabbing death at the hands of Colver, and the teen lovers fleeing toward San Francisco with plans to carry out a suicide pact.

"This Administration Ended, Rather Than Extended, Two Wars"

Sure, the quote is only my fantasy. No one in Washington -- no less President Obama -- ever said, "This administration ended, rather than extended, two wars," and right now, it looks as if no one in an official capacity is likely to do so any time soon. It's common knowledge that a president -- but above all a Democratic president -- who tried to de-escalate a war like the one now expanding in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, and withdraw American troops, would be so much domestic political dead meat.

This everyday bit of engrained Washington wisdom is, in fact, based on not a shred of evidence in the historical record. We do, however, know something about what could happen to a president who escalated a counterinsurgency war: Lyndon Johnson comes to mind for expanding his inherited war in Vietnam out of fear that he would be labeled the president who "lost" that country to the communists (as Harry Truman had supposedly "lost" China). And then there was Vice President Hubert Humphrey who -- incapable of rejecting Johnson's war policy -- lost the 1968 election to Richard Nixon, a candidate pushing a fraudulent "peace with honor" formula for downsizing the war.

Still, we have no evidence about how American voters would deal with a president who didn't take the Johnson approach to a losing war. The only example might be John F. Kennedy, who reputedly pushed back against escalatory advice over Vietnam, and certainly did so against his military high command during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In both cases, however, he acted in private, offering quite a different face to the world.

We know that there would be those on the right, and quite a few war-fightin' liberals as well, who would go nuclear over any presidential minus option in Afghanistan. Many of them will, in fact, do so over anything less than the McChrystal plan anyway. And we know that a media storm would certainly follow. But when it comes to how voters would react, especially at a moment when unhappiness with the Afghan War (as well as the president's handling of it) is on the rise, there is no historical evidence.

Question: How do you get away with murder?

Answer: Hire your victim.

There are 16 workplace deaths in the United States every day. Most companies are never prosecuted for negligence, even after repeated warnings that their workers were in danger.