Gov. Chris Gregoire is holding a press conference in Seattle this afternoon (at Cupcake Royale on Capitol Hill actually, with owner Jody Hall who was a big supporter of the health care reform bill from a small biz point of view), to announce her response to the lawsuit filed by 13 state attorneys general, including Washington state AG Rob McKenna.

We're just not sure if Gregoire can top her original response, to which a friend of mine in NY (with whom I shared the vid at the time) said: "Wow. You guys have real governor."

Camden is there covering it now (with a video camera), so we'll see.

UPDATE:

And here's Camden's "AP" report. (He'll get us video coverage soon.)

Gov. Gregoire and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and Colorado Governor Bill Ritter (all Democrats whose attorney generals joined the anti-health care reform lawsuit against their wishes) filed a joint motion with court in Florida federal court today (where the attorneys general suit was filed) that presents info that, in Gregoire's words, contradicts McKenna's filing wich states that Washington can't afford the health care mandate. She also said the joint filing  shows that the health care reform bill will reduce costs for Washington tax payers.

At the time that McKenna and the other dissident attorneys general filed suit in late March against the health care reform bill, the judge in Florida said he was not accepting "friend of the court" briefs like the one Gregoire filed today.

Gregoire said she and her posse of Democratic governors filed now in the hope that the judge is ready to consider new briefs.

A Seattle firm, Schroeter Goldmark and Bender, worked on the brief pro bono.

Gregoire said that right after McKenna joined the lawsuit, she told him she was going to make sure the voices of the thousands of people from Washington state who benefit from health care reform are "going to show up" in the case.

"I said from the beginning—the action of the attorney general in filing this lawsuit does not represent the governor, the insurance commissioner, the legislative leadership or the thousands of Washingtonians that would benefit from national health care reform," Gregoire said.

We have a call in to McKenna's office.

UPDATE: We asked for a custom made quote from McKenna's office to our customize question (had McKenna read Gregoire's friend of the court brief and what were his specific reactions?), but all we got was this press release statment:

“The 20 states, represented by 16 attorneys general and four governors, members of the National Federation of Independent Business and individuals affected by these new mandates filed this lawsuit because health care reform is too important to build on an unconstitutional foundation,” McKenna said.

“The requirement that every individual obtain qualified health care coverage or pay a penalty is an unprecedented expansion of the federal government’s powers that deserves scrutiny by our courts,” he said. “Similarly, we believe the massive expansion of the Medicaid program will unconstitutionally require states to spend billions more on this program at a time when state budgets are already in crisis.”