Republicans in Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District did more than flirt with a pro-secession resolution at their convention last Saturday. They went further than their fellow Republicans in CD 2 did a few weeks ago, and passed the thing -- by apparently unanimous voice vote.

That was the report of the citizen journalists who post on the e-democracy.org Minnesota Politics and Issues Forum. The resolution, as posted: "Be it resolved the Republican Party of Minnesota supports nullification of unconstitutional federal laws and secession as options to enforce state sovereignty."

Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, couldn't have written it any better.

Nearly 300 Minnesotans lost their lives in the Civil War, fighting to keep the United States whole. That this state's Republicans -- members of the Party of Abraham Lincoln -- would endorse secession as a legitimate option ought to rattle Minnesotans' sense of history. GOP state chairman Tony Sutton dismissed the resolution as a gesture of protest and expression of frustration with the federal government, nothing more. That may be so -- but it's a protest that raises questions about what the Tea Party movement is brewing in the GOP.