Madisonians — including Police Chief Noble Wray — fret about the new concealed carry law in action.

Our local liberal rag, the Cap Times, displays and magnifies the worrying for its skittish readers.

What really trips Wray's trigger is the lack of a meaningful training requirement. Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen prepared rules requiring four hours of training courses, but fellow Republicans thought even that low bar overly onerous and GOP Gov. Scott Walker agreed. Says Wray, "I thought four hours was a bare minimum," adding that almost all state law enforcement officials agree.

What exactly do you do for 4 hours? It seems as though the point of making it 4 hours was to deter people from exercising their rights. That is, it wasn't really to serve the state's legitimate interest in safety, but for the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of the citizen who chooses to carry a gun. (Do you recognize the italicized words? Google them if you don't, especially if you enjoy irony, the exposure of hypocrisy, and fun stuff like that.)

Madison's concealed gun crowd has to be minuscule, I'd guess. After all, it's hard for me to imagine the biomolecular chemistry professor or the pediatric oncologist yearning to tote a concealed sidearm. So how many are seeking permits in Madison?

I love the smug elitism. Madison people are all professors and doctors. Not even just run-of-the-mill professors and doctors. We're a steaming mass of biomolecular chemistry professors and pediatric oncologists. It's those lowlifes from beyond the gleaming city's limits who want guns. Ugh! These benighted folk want to cling to some guns along with their religion. They don't belong here, just like that fiend Scott Walker and all the Republicans in the legislature don't belong here. They are bringing their what's-the-matter-with-Wisconsin values to our beautiful city!

The author of the Cap Times piece — Paul Fanlund — tries to find out how many Madisonians there are among the the 67,000 who have applied for permits and is surprised to learn that it's illegal to disclose that information. Law-abiding gun owners actually have privacy interests the state wants to protect. What a surprise! But it would be so interesting to know what loathsome, Republican-voting communities they came from. Surely not the teeming-with-physicists-and-oncologists Madison!

Fanlund quotes Chief Wray:

"What I can't understand is how come we have not evolved beyond the point that the best way to protect ourselves is a gun? How come we cannot come up with something that is less destructive and less permanent."

I don't know, Chief. I'm pretty evolved myself, being a Madisonian professor, but I don't know. I do have a question for you though: Why haven't the police — the police you lead — eliminated crime in our neighborhoods? Why are there still rapes and robberies? Why are there still gangs? Why haven't your police evolved to the point where you have solved these problems for us? Because, I know that I, personally, would love to depend on government for all my personal protection. How come you cannot come up with something?

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen is okay with guns in the Capitol and other state buildings.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. How does that square with the image — seared in our brains — of thousands of protesters cramming into the rotunda and winding themselves up into a frenzy of indignation?

Van Hollen said those demonstrations did not change his opinion on whether people should be allowed to carry guns in the Capitol.

"Any one of them could have been carrying a firearm without our knowledge already had they wanted to do so," Van Hollen said.

At one point in the protests, weapons screening was introduced, but it's gone now. These days, there's nothing to stop a person with criminal intent from going in with a gun, so Van Hollen is implying that it's in fact a safeguard for ordinary citizens to have guns too. He doesn't come out and say that though. Having seen the effect of the rotunda on the human mind, I worry about ordinary citizens in the Capitol with guns.

"Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen was asked months ago to assist in a growing secret investigation...

"... of former and current aides to Gov. Scott Walker, but Van Hollen's office declined, sources familiar with the request said Tuesday."

Paul Ryan won't run for the Senate seat Herb Kohl is vacating.

All right then. Who do we want to see run?  Surely, not the 69-year-old Tommy Thompson, who said, a year ago, when he decided not to challenge Russ Feingold, that it was time for a new generation to take over.

So who is there? J.B. Van Hollen?

"Now that the law is 'dead,' will Wisconsin return the money or rebuff any other federal grant money?"

"Will other state governments declaring the law dead do the same? If so, how much money do they stand to lose? How will this impact their consistuents [sic]? It's a pretty worthwhile line of inquiry."

Well, yeah, it sure is. Congress larded the 2,000-page bill with so much spending that we're supposed to be so fat by now that we can't do anything more than roll over and submit to any unconstitutional excesses of power that came with the lard. How dare Wisconsin's Attorney General stand up and say no?!

***

I put "sic" up there because I assume "consistuents" is a typo, not a portmanteau, a deliberate incorporation of "sissy."

"A year ago, pretty much all law professors dismissed the argument as frivolous.... The law professors had a failure of imagination."

That's Randy Barnett — talking about the constitutional challenges to the health care law — quoted in Politico's ominously titled article "Right takes refuge in Constitution."

By the way, last Wednesday, I attended a Federalist Society-sponsored panel discussion here in Madison about this topic. One of the speakers was Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, who has just taken steps to join the Florida lawsuit challenging the law. Also on the panel were Jon Richards, a state legislator who supports the law, and Ilya Somin, the George Mason law professor who has written that the lawsuits are at least not frivolous.

Scrambling to find 2 of the last few seats, Meade and I sat at a table which seemed to be full of lawyers who supported health care reform. One lawyer haughtily informed me that whatever law professors might think about the Constitution, it's really all politics, and this health care reform represents a big, important political effort and that's why it's going to be upheld in the courts. I said, if it's all politics, then what of all the politics pushing back against the law? What about the polls that show most people are against it and what about the last election? If you're going to say politics determines the outcome, then don't you have to take that politics into account too? The lawyer looked either alarmed or angry, because I, a law professor, didn't simply assert that the Constitution matters, which would have made it easy for him to irritatingly chuckle about naivete. But right then, the panel started, saving him from having to try to wriggle off my skewer.

Van Hollen kicked off the discussion with assertions that he joined the lawsuit not because he's opposed to the health care statute, but because of the rule of law. The litigation is important to test the scope of congressional power. We have a system of a balance of powers, which he likened to a "teeter-totter." The states have to take their position on the other side of the teeter totter or things aren't going to work very well. The idea is to push back against federal power and to give the courts the opportunity to clarify the law. Van Hollen speaks like the well-polished politician he is.

Richards was having none of this abstract rule-of-law business. Economic realities should trump legal jargon, he said. He portrayed constitutional law as a matter of technical conceptions that shouldn't be allowed to stop government from doing the things that need to be done. He focused on the policy reasons for supporting the law and the argument that the law is constitutional flowed naturally from his support of the law. As for lawsuits: "Lawsuits are a real distraction."

Somin said the rule of law is "technical conceptions" — which was the punchline of the day, in my view. He gave a measured presentation, explaining the case law in a professorly style, and assessing the odds that the Supreme Court would overturn the individual mandate. (He said the 4 liberals would stick together and uphold it, that the conservatives were a more "fractious" bunch, so although Scalia, Thomas, and Alito would vote against it, he doesn't know what Roberts and Kennedy will do.)

Here's my page of notes from the Somin part of the panel:



After that, there were some questions from the audience. One questioner, trying to get his mind around the notion that the failure to buy insurance is inactivity and arguably therefore not "economic activity" within the meaning of the Commerce Clause case law, said "If you look at a human being as a going concern...." — which I thought was pretty funny. Yes, the government sees us as little businesses, as we sit here ostensibly doing nothing: our hearts pump blood, our gut digests food, and our brain cells spark with resistance to the purchase of products the government knows we should be buying.

ADDED: Video of the panel, via Ilya.

"Poll shows Sen. Kohl in 'solid position,' but GOP points out same was said of Sen. Feingold."

"[T]he Dec. 10-12 survey shows him with leads over potential GOP rivals Rep. Paul Ryan, former Gov. Tommy Thompson and state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen ranging from 6 to 13 points."

***

Adding tags to this post, I had to make a new one for Kohl. I've been blogging for nearly 7 years. Kohl has been one of my Senators the entire time. I never had the occasion to make a tag for him? That means something.

"Jail booking policy today calls for reporting directly to immigration authorities any inmate who can’t produce proof of being in the United States legally."

In Madison, Wisconsin!

The Dane County Immigration Task Force in May recommended an end to routine reporting to ICE at booking. Weeks later, the Madison City Council went on record in overwhelming opposition to the jail reporting policy, recommending that only inmates charged with felonies be flagged for ICE.

[Dane County Sheriff Dave] Mahoney says he won’t change his policy. “I have a moral and ethical responsibility to ensure the security of everyone in my institution,” he says....

Local professionals who work with undocumented immigrants, mostly Latinos, speak passionately of how fear of deportation because of the jail policy affects lives of immigrant families.

The fear can paralyze, says Prudencio Oyarbide, coordinator of Clinica Latina at Mental Health Center of Dane County, a nonprofit agency serving low-income people. He says that some of his clients greatly fear making a misstep that brings them to the attention of police, to jail, and then to deportation: “They have significant impairment. They can’t work, they can’t sleep, they obsess all day long about making a mistake that ends life as they know it.” He estimates that 10 percent of his caseload of 45 to 55 clients shows fear that rises to this level of disorder.

Amy Kucin oversees Mental Health Center programs for adults with drug and alcohol issues. She sees how the fear of deportation complicates the challenges of kicking a habit. “I have a client who was arrested for drinking and driving and is working on sobriety,” she says. “He has so much fear about being out in public that he has to remind himself that his problem is drinking and driving — not looking Latino in public. The anxiety around that is really a struggle. He drives to work and goes home. Other than that, he does not go out."...

Meanwhile, also in Madison, Wisconsin:

Gov. Jim Doyle denied a request Tuesday by Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen to file a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Department of Justice's lawsuit against Arizona over its new immigration law.

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen won't defend the domestic partnership law.

''When the people have spoken by amending our Constitution, I will abide by their command. When policy makers have ignored their words, I will not.''

The new statutory scheme is being challenged by the Wisconsin Family Council on the ground that it violates the anti-same-sex marriage amendment that was added to the state constitution in 2006. Here is an earlier blog post on the case.

Governor Doyle — who just announced that he won't run for re-election — is predictably displeased.

Is Van Hollen launching a run?

ADDED: Here's the memo written by (my UW Law School colleague) David Schwartz on the legal issue in the case: PDF. Doyle released the memo yesterday as a response to Van Hollen's decision. I have not read the memo yet.

"Madison gun owner Auric Gold said he often carries a handgun in a holster while walking in his east side neighborhood..."

"... a right that attorney general J.B. Van Hollen affirmed in a memorandum to prosecutors on Monday. Van Hollen said it's legal to openly carry a gun on the street in Wisconsin and advised prosecutors that merely having a gun doesn't, by itself, warrant a disorderly conduct charge."

It's like a Western movie up here. Can you really just swagger around the sidewalks of Madison and Milwaukee with a gun in a holster? In your hand?

Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn said he'll continue to tell officers they can't assume people are carrying guns legally in a city that has seen nearly 200 homicides in the past two years.

"My message to my troops is if you see anybody carrying a gun on the streets of Milwaukee, we'll put them on the ground, take the gun away and then decide whether you have a right to carry it," Flynn said. "Maybe I'll end up with a protest of cowboys. In the meantime, I've got serious offenders with access to handguns. It's irresponsible to send a message to them that if they just carry it openly no one can bother them."

Today, tea parties. Tomorrow, a protest of cowboys.

AND: Glenn Reynolds says:

So if you see Police Chief Ed Flynn, put him on the ground, take his wallet away, and then decide whether he’s accepted any bribes that day. If, after doing that, you think the money’s his, give his wallet back. Who cares what the law says? It’s the Milwaukee Way!

Also, in the comments, Sigivald says:

A gun in your hand is likely to be brandishing.