Hey, wait, you didn't ask me in 2003...

This breathless expose today from our friends at the Journal Slantinel:

Madison - Three weeks after taking office, Gov. Jim Doyle bypassed the normal process for hiring outside attorneys when he signed a contract with a Milwaukee lawyer to negotiate casino agreements with Indian tribes...

Under the state's standard procedures, the governor first asks the attorney general for legal help. If the governor is turned down - because the attorney general doesn't have enough staff or is short on expertise in a particular area - he then hires outside counsel.

But in this case, Doyle hired a lawyer without consulting Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager...

But Michael Bauer, Lautenschlager's administrator of legal services, said the law, in his view, requires the governor to ask the attorney general for legal help before hiring an outside lawyer. Lautenschlager would have gladly helped negotiate the deals, he said.

And those crack investigators at DOJ apparently discovered the hiring three and a half years later, when a reporter asked them about it. It wasn't exactly a secret that Bill Jennaro was doing that work. A little late to complain, ain'a?