It’s hard enough watching the ambulance chasers at the U.S. Justice Department pull this fake injury publicity stunt on Microsoft. Now, a growing number of state attorneys general are strapping on the whiplash collar and hobbling around for the cameras.

Emboldened by their triumph over Big Tobacco, lawyers for nine states met in Chicago last week to plan their attack on Big Windows. There is a subtle difference: the states took on the fabulously wealthy tobacco industry because its product hurts people; they’re going after Microsoft merely because it’s fabulously wealthy.

Actually, this is a very promising trend for the states. Why struggle to create a favorable climate to grow your economy — all that nonsense about good schools, decent roads, rational tax policies — when you can just sue? Start at the top of the Fortune 500, make a sufficient pest of yourself and settle. Butcher one cash cow and move on to the next.

At issue is whether Microsoft may include its web browser, Internet Explorer, as part of its Windows operating system, the operating system that comes as standard equipment on roughly 95 percent of the world’s computers. The company says the browser is an integral part of its system; the government says not.

The bottom line is this: Microsoft wants to sell its product in a configuration that best represents itself; it does not force the consumer to use it; it does not prohibit, or even discourage, the consumer or the computer manufacturer from installing a competing browser. In fact, two of the biggest manufacturers, Compaq and IBM, include the leading competitor, Netscape, as standard equipment on some of their models and Bill Gates doesn’t even whimper about it.

The Justice Department reached a new level of absurdity this week when it urged a judge to reject Microsoft’s proposed solution — offering versions of Windows with or without the browser — because the non-browser version doesn’t work as well. Which, of course, is what Microsoft has been saying all along.

Until Microsoft changes its ways, the feds want the company fined $1 million — per day. Sure beats working for a living. Or breaking up cocaine cartels, smashing kiddie porn rings, exposing fraudulent banking operations, rooting out campaign finance violations or any other of those mundane tasks dumped on the Justice Department.

These nine battling attorneys general aren’t saying much at this point — such as exactly how their citizens have been harmed — other than to acknowledge that they have subpoenaed a pile of Microsoft documents and that, according to Connecticut’s AG, they will decide by spring on whether to proceed.

Of course they will. It’s inevitable. These state-level lawyers have served their time in the trenches, they’ve seen every bogus lawsuit trick in the book — sleazeballs jumping onto wrecked buses, scumbags pretending to slip on icy sidewalks, lowlifes backing into limosines at stop lights. And here, rounding the corner, comes Microsoft — the biggest gold-plated, diamond-studded Mercedes on the road. They can just feel the mental anguish coming on.