As you know, the U.S. Post Office (a.k.a. The U.S. Postal Service), though deemed an independent agency, is very much a part of the U.S. Government, so it’s not very surprising that at times what they do falls under the rubric of good-enough-for-government-work. And in that tradition, we learn from today’s New York Times (Kim Severson and Matthew Healey, This Lady Liberty Is a Las Vegas Teenager, April 15, 2011, at p. A1) that the post office folks set out to issue a stamp depicting the head of the Statute of Liberty, but — oops — what they actually depicted is the head of replica that sits in front of the New York New York casino in Las Vegas.
And those are the folks whose decision to take your property is deemed well-nigh conclusive; see e.g., United States v. Carmack, 329 U.S. 230 (1946).
Further your affiant sayeth naught.
Follow up. The New York times (Anthony Ramirez, Liberty Statue Holds Its Own Against Las Vegas Facsimiles, April 16, 2011, at p. A14) brings us a follow-up story that (a) includes pictures of the two statutes, leaving your faithful servant wondering how anyone could possibly confuse one with the other, and (b) brings the dispatch that folks in Las Vegas, “the city with a short attention span,” don’t care which statute is displayed on U.S. postal stamps, quoting a visting maven from Ithaca to the effect that the difference between the genuine article and the styrofoam Vegas replica is inconsequential. O tempora, o mores.