First - hire all the lawyers

After six years of carte blanche with his rubberstamp Congress, the White House beefing up its legal team in anticipation of the Democratic Party's expected oversight. No big surprise there.

"Like any White House that has to deal with a Congress run by the other party, this White House has to bulk up its staff to deal with the inevitable flood of subpoenas. They're also going to have to coordinate with lots of friends and supporters," said Mark Corallo, a former top Republican aide to the House committee that issued more than 1,000 subpoenas to the Clinton camp.

Yeah they're going to have to get their alibis straight. And keep that number in mind when the Bush supporters start screaming about partisan witch hunts. But I thought this was more interesting.

Corallo and Barbara Comstock, another Republican public-relations executive with broad experience in Hill investigations, are launching a crisis-communications firm to serve officials and corporations who, Corallo said, could end up as "drive-by victims" in a new round of probes.

Snow said the firm is "certainly independent of the White House."

Whatever that's supposed to mean, but if the opportunistic vultures are already circling, the Beltway insiders clearly think the White House has so much to hide that something is eventually going to be uncovered.