Back in September, when Rob McKenna asked the Washington State Supreme Court to reconsider its 7-2 decision against him in Goldmark v. McKenna, I called our state attorney general a "poor loser" who "doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell" of winning his appeal.

Yesterday the court denied his motion for reconsideration.

This whole kerfuffle has been baffling from the start, with McKenna seemingly determined to stake his reputation as a lawyer on a case he could not possibly win. Whatever the merits of the underlying case (a dispute over whether a PUD can use eminent domain to take state trust lands), McKenna's claim that the attorney general has discretion to unilaterally deny state officers and agencies access to the courts, is totally indefensible.

Such discretion would essentially allow the AG to set policy for other state officers, a 7-2 majority of justices recognized, a danger that "should be obvious in a partisan political system such as ours."

It didn't take a legal scholar to see that McKenna was on the wrong side of the law. But then, nobody ever said our attorney general was much of a lawyer.