(FORTUNE Magazine) – Given the magnitude involved, Nexis produced an answer with astonishing swiftness -- about 20 seconds, we estimated. To be sure, our favorite electronic database may have had a lot of practice dealing with the question. Presumably the present writer is not the only character wishing to check up on one of our more amazing federal programs and therefore asking Nexis how many stories it could produce in which ''set-asides'' appears within 30 words of ''fraud.'' The answer is 225. This means that a terminal masochist could easily spend a week reading newspaper and magazine stories about the infamous Section 8(a) program. The program is the exercise in reverse discrimination under which the Small Business Administration arranges for government contracts to be set aside and awarded exclusively to minority- and female-owned firms. Or, more precisely, the SBA arranges deals for companies purporting to meet the ownership standards. A recurrent phenomenon in Section 8(a) frauds is the firm whose owners turn out when undressed to have hues and genders somewhat | different from those originally claimed. The 8(a) program is pretty much always in the news because of some scandal or other. Right now the news is mostly about the Wedtech Corp., a Bronx-based manufacturer of military hardware, which is now bankrupt. Back when Wedtech was getting all those Defense Department contracts, its principal owner was a Hispanic fellow, but it now turns out that the other guys were just sort of lending him their own shares for a while. Another heavy hitter in the Nexis files is Jopel Contracting and Trucking, which is famous for being a subcontractor to Schiavone Construction, which in turn is famous for having former Labor Secretary Ray Donovan as its executive vice president. Ray's precise role in dealing with Jopel is among the matters being decided at this very moment in a state court in New York City. However, the prosecution states that Jopel was not the minority-owned firm it pretended to be, but was instead set up by Schiavone so it could claim to be complying with a noble requirement that disadvantaged entrepreneurs must get a piece of the action when New York City ineffectually tries to build a tunnel under the East River with federal money. But here is the really amazing part about Section 8(a). Almost everybody is for it. The New York Times, which endlessly finds itself chronicling the program's frauds, is editorially all for it. Okay, that is not too astonishing. But Ronald Reagan is also for it, enthusiastically or otherwise. ''The Administration position is that we agree with the set-aside program,'' spokesman Larry Speakes proclaimed last year. The program, always a guaranteed winner in Congress, testifies to the enormous popularity of reverse discrimination in the U.S. Or maybe of masochism.