(Washington, DC) -- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is rapidly losing popularity.

A telephone poll taken late last week shows 48-percent of Americans don't approve of how Pelosi is doing her job.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll comes as the California Democrat faces intense criticism over what she knew and when about government use of enhanced interrogation techniques.

Last week, Pelosi said in a news conference that the CIA lied to Congress in 2002 and 2003 about its use of interrogation methods like waterboarding on terror suspects.

Pelosi's new 39-percent approval rating makes her less popular than other congressional Democrats, who got 51-percent approval from respondents to the April CNN/ORC survey.

The rating also puts her at about the same approval level that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had in 1995 during his first year in that job.

(Copyright 2009 by Newsroom Solutions)