GOP Rep. Dan Bishop, HB2 cosponsor, demonstrates his "eyes wide shut" approach to legislating.

Since Gov. Pat McCrory's new law in North Carolina dictates exactly who can use which bathroom according to one's designated gender on their birth certificate, the question of enforcement is now at issue. You'll be shocked to find out, as Samantha Michaels did, that no one has really thought this through. Michaels dialed up several NC police departments—who clearly weren’t consulted by lawmakers—to inquire about enforcement and here's what she found:

"That's a very interesting question. We don't have police officers sitting at public bathrooms all day long," a spokesman at the Raleigh Police Department told me with a laugh. Over in Greensboro, the state's third-most-populous city, I received a similar answer. "We would respond if we received a complaint. It's not like we would be standing guard at bathrooms," said Susan Danielsen, a spokeswoman for the local police department, also suppressing a laugh. At the Wilmington Police Department, spokeswoman Linda Rawley said the law struck her as strange. "So that means people have to go to the bathroom with birth certificates? Yeah, that was curious to me." At the Asheville Police Department, spokeswoman Christina Hallingse noted, "We're not checking birth certificates. We just don't have the police power to be able to do that in bathrooms."

But it’s not just the PDs that are stumped. Here’s a co-sponsor of the law itself explaining the plan:

Republican state Rep. Dan Bishop, a co-sponsor of the legislation, did not respond to requests for comment. But he has said he never intended for the legislation to lead to bathroom policing. "There are no enforcement provisions or penalties in HB2. Its purpose is to restore common sense bathroom and shower management policy in public buildings, not to pick out people to punish," he wrote in a statement to WBTV.

That guy’s effing joking, right? Translation: “Hey, this was just an exercise in scoring cheap political points, not thoughtful legislating. What did you expect? I’m just a hack with a pin on my lapel.”