More Bad Press for the IRS.

Just when the agency got past the story about investigating the NAACP's tax-exempt status, the IRS gets slapped again, this time in an AP story on a report concluding that the rate of corporate audits in the first six months of this year was off last year's pace. The agency insists the story's bunk. Figures for the first half of the year don't make a good comparison, officials say, because the pace of audits picks up in the latter half. Both the House and Senate have refused to meet the Bush administration's funding request for fiscal 2004 IRS enforcement efforts.