May 19 (Bloomberg) -- From Alaska to Oklahoma, states are declaring themselves fed up with the bossing around they get from Washington. Sick of being told do this, don’t do that, they sound like banks.

Whether the problem is meddling in drivers’ license requirements or limiting gun ownership, state lawmakers accuse the national government of usurping their powers in blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution.

This revival of states’ rights fever has prompted legislatures in five states to proclaim their sovereignty and demand that Washington halt its unconstitutional power grab. In seven more states in the Midwest and South, similar resolutions have made it halfway through the legislatures.

The states say the 10th Amendment to the Constitution gives them near total latitude to act in areas not reserved to the federal government.

Raise an army? Washington’s supposed to do that. Tell schools what standards children must meet? Not Uncle Sam’s job.

Alaska’s resolution, typical of those making the rounds of state houses, includes a “demand for the federal government to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally mandated powers.”

Or else, what?

However fed up, the states stop short of refusing to take it anymore. None vows to turn off the federal cash spigot.

Taking Deep Gulps

In fact, the states at the forefront of the movement are among those that take the deepest gulps from the federal money trough.

That would be Alaska, Idaho, Oklahoma, North Dakota and South Dakota, whose legislatures have approved resolutions accusing Washington of violating the 10th Amendment.

Alaskans were getting $1.84 cents returned in federal expenditures for every $1 they paid in U.S. taxes, according to the most recent count by the Tax Foundation, covering 2005. That made Alaska the state with the third highest return in the country.

The other four states that have passed sovereignty resolutions also got more back than they gave. Returns ranged from sixth-ranked North Dakota at $1.68 to 20th-ranked Idaho, at $1.21.

Rebels in Georgia

There is one state where lawmakers wrote an “or else” clause into their states’ rights resolution. That would be good ole Georgia, where I live.

I hate to give smug non-Southerners fodder for their anti- Southern stereotypes. But the resolution the Georgia Senate passed 43-1 last month takes this whole 10th Amendment thing several steps too far. Fortunately, it didn’t pass the House.

It says Georgia can declare any federal criminal law null and void unless the U.S. Constitution specifically allows Congress to outlaw that conduct.

Storm the federal penitentiaries! Free the drug traffickers! Liberate Jeffrey Skilling and Bernard Ebbers and put poor Rod Blagojevich back in the Illinois governor’s office!

The only acts the Constitution allows Congress to prosecute are treason, counterfeiting, piracy, felonies on the high seas, international offenses and slavery.

While extreme, Georgia’s version shows where this 10th Amendment argument can lead.

Ugly History

It is worth remembering that nullification has an ugly history in this part of the country. During the civil rights era, southern demagogues claimed states could ignore any federal ruling or law they considered unconstitutional. Specifically, no federal court, president or Congress could force the South to integrate, they claimed.

The whole notion of states’ rights was code for the states keeping blacks in separate and inferior schools, housing, jobs and bus seats.

None of that has anything to do with the current resolution, says its sponsor, state Senator Chip Pearson, a Republican from Dawsonville, Georgia. Several Republican leaders in the Senate signed on as co-sponsors.

Pearson acknowledges the resolution specifically offers nullification as an option, but it doesn’t really mean it.

Nor should we take seriously the part where it suggests the entire union could be dissolved if violations of the 10th Amendment continue.

A dissolution of the union?

No Secession

“We’re not proposing that,” says Pearson, or secession, either, in spite of news accounts to the contrary.

And yet, among the groups that have voiced support for this and similar efforts are the Confederate States of America, Texas Nationalist Movement and the Alaska Independence Party, all of which favor secession.

Here’s the deal. One of the documents floating around the states’ rights movement is a resolution Thomas Jefferson secretly wrote and the Kentucky legislature passed in 1798 to protest the federal Alien and Sedition Acts.

Enacted during an undeclared war with France, one of the laws criminalized speech critical of the government. Jefferson believed these laws unconstitutional and therefore subject to being disobeyed with impunity.

“We couldn’t do a whole lot better than the language that was already penned,” Pearson says.

Actually, they could have. Jefferson wrote it’s up to he states to decide when speech becomes too “licentious,” for example.

Different Time

Law and circumstances have moved 200 years since then.

These days much of the states’ rights energy is coming from Republicans opposed to President Barack Obama’s policies.

The irony is that the current 10th Amendment movement was sparked in part by a 36-year-old Los Angeles man who says he was angry at the Bush administration’s “dictatorial” power grabs. Michael Bolden started a Web site in 2007, wwww.tenthamendmentcenter.com, which has become information central for these resolutions.

“The idea is to get some resistance on the state level,” Bolden says.

Maine is refusing to enforce federal mandates for drivers’ license requirements, for example. And now the federal government seems to be backing off on the idea.

The trick is in picking the fight. The Supreme Court was right to declare it unconstitutional to deny a race of people equal treatment. Eventually the South complied. The union survived.

(Ann Woolner is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own).

To contact the writer of this column: Ann Woolner in Atlanta at awoolner@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 19, 2009 00:01 EDT