By Tim Shoemaker
From this morning’s front page of the Washington Post:
Not five minutes after President Obama signed health-care legislation into law Tuesday, top staff members for Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II made their way out of his office, court papers in hand and TV cameras in pursuit, and headed to Richmond’s federal courthouse to sue to stop the measure.
Thirteen other state attorneys general also sought to stop the health-care law Tuesday, jointly suing in Florida. But Cuccinelli (R) went his own way, arguing that a Virginia law enacted this month that prohibits the government from requiring people to buy health insurance creates an “immediate, actual controversy” between state and federal law that gives the state unique standing on which to sue.
The move was classic Cuccinelli — bold, defiant and in-your-face, an effort to use any means at his disposal to stop what he sees as a federal government gone wild. That approach has transformed him in just a few months from being a fairly obscure state senator into a national conservative folk hero — a tea partier with conviction and, more importantly, power.
Since vowing last week to sue to stop health-care reform, Cuccinelli has become a fixture on national cable TV news shows. A conservative blog posted a cartoon of his head atop Superman’s body, with the caption: “You don’t tug on Superman’s cape . . . and you don’t mess around with Ken.” His Facebook page is full of messages of support from across the country, some next to the yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, which Cuccinelli has embraced — one sits next to the Virginia flag in his office.
Be sure to read the rest.
It will certainly be interesting watching this all play out in federal courts. I’ll leave you with this great Cuccinelli quote included in the article…
“It’s time for people like you all to step up and to draw the lines that our Founding Fathers thought they drew very clearly,” Cuccinelli told the crowd. “We need to reemphasize that there are sovereigns in America. One of those is the Commonwealth of Virginia.”