It looks like the host committee for the August's Democrat Convention in Denver is short of cash to the tune of $15 million.

The host committee for the Democratic National Convention faces a possible shortfall of $15 million, complicating logistics for the August event and forcing it to abruptly postpone a media walkthrough of the site scheduled for next week.

The Democratic National Committee has asked the cash-strapped panel to raise $40.6 million by Monday to finance the event. Last month, the committee said it had just $25 million in cash, and it has failed to meet each of several fundraising deadlines since signing a contract with the DNC last year.

Host committee members consistently have refused public comment on their fundraising efforts. Committee spokesman Chris Lopez could not immediately be reached by telephone Friday.

Now there is an obvious solution to the problem. The Barack Obama campaign is positively awash in cash, having raised prodigious amounts of money for months -- so much that the candidate is breaking his promise to the American people to take government funding for his campaign and abide by spending limits that go with that money. Why can't he just order his campaign to cut a check to pay for his coronation?

In a rational, constitutionally-limited system, he could. unfortunately, federal campaign finance laws are such that making that sort of transfer of cash to pay for a convention is an illegal expenditure, even if it is done in a public, totally above board fashion. So as a result, the Democrats will have to scale back plans and run a second-rate convention (perhaps appropriate, since they are giving America a second-rate candidate) instead of doing things up right. That once again demonstrates that what is legal under federal election law does not always coincide with what is ethical and what makes sense.