I don't understand the outrage at all, BOTR. As a practicing lawyer, I understand working many (sometimes excessively many) hours performing work that clients are paying for, and thus not wishing to give free legal advice in your free time, especially if you view it as unappreciated. However, this is a discussion board where participation is voluntary. Personally, if I am too busy to post, I simply don't. To analogize this to real life as you suggest, if I freely chose to join a casual conversation with non-lawyers about a hot-button legal topic, such as gay marriage, it would be absurd for me to demand that they pay for my time before I learn enough about the issue to discuss it intelligently.
Law is only like brain surgery in that you need an advanced degree and a license to practice it. Unlike brain surgery, untrained but intelligent people can usually understand the basic concepts. There is a long history of coverage of significant legal developments in the press, geared toward non-laywers, especially when it impacts public policy. So if I were to comment on documents and rulings that I hadn't read, I would expect to be corrected by those who have read them, whether they are attorneys or not.