The program's supporters point out that Congress recently passed up one chance to restore the funding, although the body will have a second opportunity in a supplemental bill to be approved next month.

SCATHING REVIEW

Mother Jones Washington bureau chief David Corn is critical of "senior reporters and top editors from The Washington Post" — or at least the newspaper's old guard in place on Sept. 2, 2004, when George W. Bush delivered his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in New York.

In fact, Mr. Corn isn't impressed with his fellow media as a whole, given its coverage of the Bush White House.

Beneath the subheadline "Why Can't the Press Tell the Truth About a President Who Didn't?', the bureau chief recalls taking a seat in the Essex House hotel to write about Mr. Bush's speech, in which the president declared Iraq "a gathering threat" and sought to link the 9/11 terrorists with the insurgency in Iraq.

"As I sat writing my piece, the tables next to me slowly filled with senior reporters and top editors from the Washington Post," he continues. "Typing away, I could hear them deride Bush's speech as a collection of misrepresentations. Their consensus was clear: Bush was trying to pull a fast one."

Yet the next morning, he says, the paper's front page flatly proclaimed: "Bush Promises 'a Safer World'"

"A media outfit … had once again enabled a president who was not being honest," Mr. Corn concludes. "And I was reminded of a 1997 remark by Ben Bradlee, the former executive editor of the Post: 'Even the very best newspapers have never learned how to handle public figures who lie with a straight face.'"