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Ken Cuccinelli's campaign for Virginia attorney general didn't receive a lot of national media attention last fall.  But his election was an important victory for those seeking to shrink the federal government.

Yesterday Cuccinelli joined other attorneys general nationwide in challenging the new health care reform, or really malform, bill.  But true to form, he took a different route.  Reports 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.

Cuccinelli deserves to be strongly and loudly supported for representing the people against Leviathan in Washington.  His chances in court may not look good, but this is merely one of the opening shots in what inevitably will be a long and hard political campaign to protect our liberties.