Giuliani and Romney continue to mix it up, though now the focus has shifted a bit to Romney's answer last night about consulting lawyers to determine the legality of launching military action against Iran without the permission of Congress.

The Giuliani campaign fired away with both barrels earlier today, accusing Romney instituting a "lawyers test" on national security and comparing him to John Kerry. Ouch. Romney's camp blasted back, calling Rudy's response to the same question, in which he repeatedly used the term "exigent circumstances," as confused legalese.

They also emailed out this post by Paul Mirengoff at Powerline calling Rudy's "lawyers test" attack unfair, and this piece by law professor and Romney surrogate Douglas Kmiec which the campaign said "demolishes" Rudy's argument about the line item veto.

Meanwhile, today at a stop in Michigan Romney termed the dust up over his "lawyers" answer from last night a "phony issue" and then tried to turn it around on Rudy: "He [Giuliani] gets first place when it comes to suing and lawyering," Romney said.

And since any jab these days cannot be left unanswered, Giuliani Communications Director Katie Levinson shot back with this in a statement released just a bit ago: "Hopefully, Mitt Romney isn't going to check with the same group of lawyers who told him the Bill Clinton line item veto was constitutional."

To be continued.....