How to obtain a letter of interpretation from the FAA

Before you request an opinion, you might want to go to faa.gov and see if the issue has already been addressed. Go to Regulations Division Legal Interpretations and Chief Counsel's Opinions. If you don't find a satisfactory answer, just send a detailed letter (I recommend including a scenario that is on point) to the office of the Chief Counsel. One caveat, be careful what you ask for. Often times the flexibility of a slightly ambiguous regulation is preferable (and arguable) over one that has been officially interpreted.
 
Just a side note. It is my opinion that straight in approaches are not categorically "illegal" - FAA advisory circulars are pretty clear in the guidance they provide (as are applicable FARs and cases). However, depending on the circumstances, every pilot should be on the lookout for that legal catch-all, "careless and reckless" operation.
 
Traffic patterns, IMO, is an example of the FAA way overstepping the letter of the law when making/issuing policies. The reg states:

§91.126 Operating on or in the vicinity of an airport in Class G airspace.
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(a) General. Unless otherwise authorized or required, each person operating an aircraft on or in the vicinity of an airport in a Class G airspace area must comply with the requirements of this section.

(b) Direction of turns. When approaching to land at an airport without an operating control tower in Class G airspace—

(1) Each pilot of an airplane must make all turns of that airplane to the left unless the airport displays approved light signals or visual markings indicating that turns should be made to the right, in which case the pilot must make all turns to the right; and
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What if it is not necessary to make turns when approaching the airport? What amount of heading change constitutes a turn, by the legal definition? 10 degrees? 45? 90?
 
Some people just like to see things that aren't there. Sort of like an idiot I flew with once that argued that since a part of our paperwork has lines for two pieces of information and the "description of sections of a release" from the pictorial in our FOM reads those are two pieces of information, it meant we were REQUIRED to fill in those two pieces of information. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Further, elsewhere it explicitly stated one of those was to be completed (not both).
 
I have seen opspecs actually specify requirements for straight in approaches to non-towered airports in VFR.

At AMF we could do them as long as we did not interfere with other traffic in the pattern. This required us to listen in on CTAF along with giving position reports at certain distances from the field.
 
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