SO HELP ME IVY. The Post reports that President Bush is beefing up his besieged White House legal team with some crack lawyers to defend the administration against a variety of congressional inquiries. As the Post's Peter Baker notes, all eight [of the newly-hired attorneys] received degrees from Ivy League schools or from West Point. So, when it comes to policy-making over at the so-called Justice Department, a Regent University law degree, like the one held by Monica "I may have crossed the line" Goodling and a battalion of other fundies, suffices. But when it comes to protecting the president's backside, apparently a divine legal degree is no substitute for an East Coast elite Ivy School pedigree. --Tom Schaller