Friday morning, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, sent the State Patrol to the Monona home of Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller based on tips that the Democratic leader had returned home. They came up empty-handed.

The call of the house was lifted on Friday at 1:30 p.m., said Jeff Renk, the Senate's deputy chief clerk.

Later Friday, Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, acknowledged he didn't know "what the practical ability is to force a legislator to come back to the Capitol."

But he emphasized he has no plans to bring anybody in under force. "It (arrest) is never going to happen," Fitzgerald said.

Madison attorney Jon Axelrod, who successfully invoked legislative immunity in the mid-1980s to keep a lawmaker's aide from being forced to turn over documents sought by a lobbyist's wife, said the power to compel attendance appears to be limited to the Senate sergeant at arms.

"It seems to me that you raise real constitutional issues at the point that you handcuff the senators and bring them back to Madison," he said. "It seems to me it raises a constitutional question as to whether the police can be involved at all."