The governor hates it. So do leaders of the state legislature, members of the Seattle City Council, members of the King County Council, and the more than 19,000 people who have joined the Facebook group "Washington Tax Payers OPT OUT of Rob McKenna's lawsuit."

But can anyone stop Republican attorney general Rob McKenna's attempt to take down the new health-care law in federal court?

The simple answer is yes. Over time, the legislature has described certain parameters for the AG's job—which currently give McKenna plenty of leeway to take the new federal health-care law to court.

"He probably has sufficient authority to bring this kind of action," said Hugh Spitzer, an affiliate professor at the University of Washington School of Law who specializes in Washington State constitutional law. "The legislature, obviously, could change that."

There are a number of possible routes. Lawmakers could amend restrictions on the AG's powers to prohibit a Washington State attorney general from acting against the will of, say, the Washington State governor. Or they could get very specific and prohibit any attorney general from challenging the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010. You get the idea.

The problem with this kind of tinkering is that it can easily boomerang in unexpected ways, or flat-out backfire. To take one hypothetical example: a future Democratic AG needing to stand up to a Republican governor. For this reason, no kind of limits on McKenna's statutory powers are currently under serious discussion in the Democrat-controlled legislature—though Jeff Reading, spokesman for the state senate Democrats, says there is talk of using the special session currently under way to bar McKenna from using public funds for his suit.

Another option, recalling McKenna from office, would face a very high hurdle. In order to get a recall petition on the ballot (which requires a staggering 710,485 voter signatures), backers would first have to convince the state supreme court that McKenna has engaged in "malfeasance, misfeasance, or violation of the oath of office."

Political gamesmanship, yes, but those other things are not necessarily provable in this case.

All of which leaves Election Day as the best way to stop McKenna (though not, unfortunately, his lawsuit). While it will be two years before McKenna is up for reelection—or, as many suspect, runs for governor—it's not too soon to start hanging the unpopularity of his own lawsuit around his neck. Representative Jay Inslee (D-1), a likely opponent of McKenna in the 2012 governor's race, dove right into this strategy recently, telling a health-care rally in Seattle that even Ronald Reagan's former solicitor general thought McKenna's lawsuit was absurd. Inslee then asked the rally: "If Ronald Reagan's solicitor general can figure out it's absurd, why can't Rob McKenna?" Repeated often enough, that's exactly the sort of attack that could re-brand McKenna, transforming him from a "moderate" Republican to an unelectable, teabagging, right-of-Reagan extremist.