You can describe Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's new book, The Last Line of Defense , in a lot of ways — bold, fearless, righteous, didactic, full of exclamation points, 13.6 ounces — but one phrase you probably wouldn't use would be ... um, page-turner. It might double as a wonderful sleep aid, in fact, if they could produce it with a pillow-soft cover. Apparently, the AG's editors at Crown Publishing thought so as well. As a top-secret (but leaked) draft suggests, they tried to breathe a little romance and intrigue into the book, pairing Cuccinelli with a ghost writer to produce a new version casting The Cooch himself as a modern-day freedom fighter, a one-man bastion against the tyranny of big government. Clearly, from the look of Cooch's deletions, he didn't care for the ghost writer's help.
Chapter VI: Through the Perilous Fight
By the dawn's early light, he cradled Liberty in his arms. She seemed so weak and frail. What had those bastards done to her? Her robes had become disheveled, and he rearranged them to make sure her bosom was in no way exposed for the titillation of those godless perverts. Surely, Obama had done this to her, the so-called president and his army of lawless Constitution-stompers who were determined to force her citizens to engage in commerce and to insinuate themselves into every nook and cranny of Americans' lives. What would be next? Their bedrooms? Their birth control plans?
"Why are they doing this to me, Ken?" Libby said, her body now trembling. "I thought the government was supposed to protect me and take care of me."
"Your government will never love you," Ken whispered to Libby. "It can't."*
"What about big business? Banks? Insurance companies, health-care providers. They love me, right? Surely, they are looking out for me, aren't they, Ken?" Libby pleaded.
But he loved her. Surely, there was no man who loved Liberty the way Ken did. So maybe it was fitting that he and his ragtag team of Republican state attorneys general were the only ones willing to fight for her. He explained this as gently as possible, his jaw clenched in quiet fury: "State attorneys general — once known mostly for suing companies to protect consumers — joined forces and became known for suing the federal government to protect liberty. We unexpectedly became the last line of defense against an overreaching, lawbreaking federal government."
Libby relaxed, knowing she was wrapped safely in the arms of her protector. As he stroked her chestnut hair, Ken calmly explained the danger she was in, the tyranny now surrounding her. He told her about this treacherous Obamacare, which was forcing people into commerce, and about the multitude of regulations that get in the way of growth and jobs — like the insidious EPA and its curbs on carbon dioxide emissions. She loved to just watch him in these moments, his passions enflamed: "Consider how many hundreds of thousands of regulations exist in this country — from licensing barbers, to licensing family farmers to sell their products on the roadside, to securing government permission to add a new piece of medical equipment to your local hospital to requiring abortion clinics and no other kind of medical facility or doctor's office to conform to the same building standards as hospitals, right down to dictating the number of parking spaces provided — and all the opportunities that are made more difficult to pursue (in other words, the reduction of liberty) because of those regulations."
Libby was asleep now. Ken took a moment, but just a brief one, to steel himself for the battles yet to come, with the biggest one looming on November's horizon. "But this is a battle we can win. More importantly, this is a battle we must win," he thought. "We owe no less than our fullest effort to ourselves, our predecessors, and our posterity to cherish that precious gift of liberty, to defend it, and to recruit others to its cause so that we can live in a nation where our elected leaders return to our founding vision, where liberty and personal responsibility once again trump political expediency, and where the people reclaim their rightful sovereignty — a nation where this great American experiment does not find its conclusion, but instead forever remains a beacon of freedom, opportunity, the willingness to work together despite differences, leadership on climate change, equal protection under the law for our LGBT citizens and hope for the world."
* All of Cuccinelli's direct quotes appear in the published version of The Last Line of Defense.
