I've said many times that I'm no lawyer, just a layman with a fascination for it. Every now and then, though, something comes up that makes me almost kinda sorta wish I had gone to law school, because it raises the kinds of questions that would now likely cost me a couple of hundred bucks to get answered.

Unless, of course, I find a way to get legal minds to answer it for me for free. And I have my super-secret never-fail technique to get experts to do that for me.*

Over the weekend, I read that the Senate Armed Services Committee decided to cut $1 billion from the aid the Obama administration requested for Iraq during that country's period of transition to a new government. The cuts extend to funding for security forces. They seem absurd under the present circumstances. With the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to be halved this summer, just as Iraq is trying to form a government, how does it make sense to cut funding for Iraqi troops who are trying to fill the gap left by American units?

Mary Landrieu withheld her support of the Senate's Obamacare bill until the bill was modified to secure some $300 million in Medicaid funding for Louisiana. The arrangement under which the modification made its way into the bill became known instantly as the Louisiana purchase.

Scott and John have already eviscerated the dreadful performance of Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan on FOX News Sunday. Before his appearance, the Washington Post had reported that "the normally reclusive Brennan is scheduled to appear on several Sunday TV talk shows." We now have a pretty good idea of why Brennan is "normally reclusive."

Last week the Washington Post published Neil Irwin's long profile of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke under the headline "How Bernanke staged a revolution." I found the profile interesting in several respects,

The Washington Post reported this morning that Attorney General Holder has rejected the legal opinion of the Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that the D.C. voting rights bill pending in Congress is unconstitutional.