Today I received Senator Carper's reply to my letter about Civil Asset Forfeiture. I was not satisfied by his answer, and here I how I responded:

Dear Senator Carper:

Thank you for your reply to my recent message regarding Civil Asset Forfeiture. You (or your staff) said:

Civil asset forfeiture programs violate several provisions of the Bill of Rights. Please introduce legislation to abolish civil asset forfeiture.

Civil asset forfeiture is not confiscation of contraband or illegal goods. It's not property that has been withheld as evidence during a criminal investigation. It's not a fine or restitution imposed on someone duly convicted of a crime.

Today was Newark Community Day, a local fair held annually on the University of Delaware's campus.

As usual the LPD ran an Operation Politically Homeless booth and Information table. We distributed party literature, including a flyer opposing the City of Newark's plan to have the General Assembly grant it very broad and vaguely defined new powers of taxation; and we collected names and email addresses of interested people.

The Libertarian Party of Delaware is seeking donations of used or new computer hardware. If you have any unused computer equipment taking up space, please consider giving it to us.

What we need most is a server class Pentium4 (or better) multiprocessor system. But any hardware that is less than ten years old is welcome. For example:

• Complete systems, especially Laptops / Notebooks, working or not.
• Components, such as motherboards, CPUs, memory, peripheral cards, SATA drives, tape drives, DVD burners, monitors, etc.

One of the items on the agenda for the LPD's annual Convention on May 2nd will be a set of proposed amendments to the Party's Articles of Association.

In addition to the most bloated budget ever, Congress is rushing an alarming number of bills to a vote this week w/o reading any of them. There is no compelling urgency to any of these bills:

• H.R. 1388 - Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act
• H.R. 1171 - Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program Reauthorization Act of 2009

Tim Geithner wants to nationalize the finance industry or at least control it w/o calling it nationalization.

Why not start with the Fed?

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has released a detailed study ranking the 50 states in terms of how much individual freedom each permits to its residents.

New Hampshire places #1 in the overall ranking, and first in Fiscal Policy. New York comes in dead last in Fiscal Policy, Economic Freedom, and in the overall ranking.

Delaware has a lot of room for improvement. We were ranked 30th in Fiscal Policy, 16th in Regulatory Policy, 24th in Economic Freedom, 36th in Personal Freedom, and 26th overall.

Here is how the study summarizes Delaware in its state by state descriptions:

SURJ is preparing to introduce a new bill to repeal Delaware's draconian mandatory minimum drug laws. This bill will initially be sponsored by Representative Melanie George Marshall, Senator Harris McDowell and Senator Liane Sorenson. If you live in their districts please thank them and express your support. If not, please contact your Senator and Representative once the bill is introduced and ask them to co-sponsor it. According to SURJ:

During his campaign Obama promised to put a stop to the DEA's persecution of medical marijuana patients and their caregivers & clinics in states where it is legal.