I was under the impression that the admin skin was the skin that was used when you logged in.  However it appears that it only uses this skin when displaying the pages under admin and host in my menu.  Is there a way to apply 1 skin if you are logged in and another if you are not logged in?

the admin skin is not only for host and admin. It is also set when you edit content, e.g. post a thread inside a forum.

Then this is odd.

The "ADMIN" is for site administration and Portal for portal operation. How do you then remove the portal edits from calling the admin skins?

Also, where/how do the admin skins get enabled as I have been looking at the DB to setup some new administrators roles for a client but I can't get them to use the admin skins, no matter what fields I set?