(My column still hasn't started back up yet, and will not do so for another week, when the editorial page editor returns from vacation. The following ran as a straight, unsigned editorial in the Courier-Post on Friday, Nov. 24. I'm including it for the purpose of having a regular editorial in my portforlio. Gotta go. Bleeding.)

If marijuana sprouts in your back-yard and you don't even know about it, the police can take your house. They can sell your house. They can use the money from selling your house to buy themselves a new police station. They can do that.

If someone borrows your car and gets arrested for drugs, the police get your car. Even if you're not convicted. Even if the guy who borrowed your car is not convicted. They keep it. This is legal.

In the case of Carol Thomas, a 44-year-old woman in Millville, her 17-year-old son borrowed her 1990 Ford Thunderbird and used it on five different occasions to sell marijuana to an undercover police officer. He was fined and sentenced to house arrest since he was, after all, guilty. But his mother was not -- was, ironically, a former narcotics officer herself -- and still had to pay $1,500, literally to bail out her car.

One spokeswoman for the Division of Criminal Justice said the state planned to drop the case, primarily because the car is too cheap to bother with. But Thomas wants them to go forward on it, because the issue goes beyond this one case.

At issue is a law that is about as evil as anything we have on the books.

The legal conceit behind it is that property used in the commission of a crime is, itself, "guilty," and can be "arrested," and seized under a civil case that is separate from any related criminal proceeding.

Normally, however, if a human defendant has the mental capacity of a 1990 Ford Thunderbird -- if he can't talk, can't advise counsel, is incapable of forming criminal intent and has a broken lefthand turn signal -- he is found unfit to stand trial.

Nonetheless, federal agencies have collected more than $ 7.3 billion this way in the 16 years this horrible law has been in place. New Jersey collected $1.7 million in one six-month period in 1998.

Some reforms passed last April. But the law shouldn't be reformed. It should be expunged, vilified and held up as a source of national shame.

And the next time police proudly display a new command vehicle and brag that it didn't cost the taxpayers anything, remember that it cost some kid all the cash he had on him when authorities arrested him but did not convict him. It cost somebody their house when neighbors thought they smelled marijuana coming out of the basement.

And it may cost Carol Thomas her 1990 Ford Thunderbird. New brakes, rotors, very clean. Only used by owner's son for occasional errands. $1,500 or best offer.