From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week, President Bush defended the decision to classify 28 pages in the Congressional Report on September 11th, despite requests from several members of Congress to release the deleted portion.

This follows efforts in the past few weeks from Democrats in Congress to begin demanding more information from the notoriously secretive administration.

Well, perhaps demanding is too strong a word.

The Daily Show's John Stewart had this observation while watching Deputy Defense Secretary

Paul Wolfowitz testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

After he got through telling the Senate committee that the military budget that he'd submitted

for next year did not include costs for the operation in Iraq.

Give me a break, will you?

When are you guys starting to be honest with us?

Come on.

Come on.

Guys!

So that's what, here's what, the reticence of this administration

is causing a United States senator.

Come on, please.

Despite the fervent insistence we heard from Senator Joe Biden, Wolfowitz did not cave in.

And partisan voting has blocked six separate amendments to the defense appropriation bill

that called for the White House to supply some basic facts. The simplest provision merely asked

the administration to detail the projected costs of maintaining a military presence in Iraq

during the upcoming year. Scott Armstrong is founder of the National Security Archive.

He says Congress should already have had access to the information that was requested.

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