Ron Paul Wants Return To Comical Olde European High Seas Policy

Impossibly enough, this post isn't about teabag protests butisabout Ron Paul. That's right, you guessed it, it is instead about whether Congress should distribute "letters of marque and reprisal" to stop pirates and stuff. This is one of those old-timey things that, to people in 1789, was a pretty clutch inclusion in the Constitution -- kind of like assigning an accurate fractional electoral value to slaves. Ron Paul wants Congress to start using this power to send forth Privateers to the high seas. Back in the halcyon days of Mercantilism, the king or queen or dauphin would send private aristocratic warships out to sea to steal other countries' ships and their booty, for Royal Profit. Sometimes those victimized countries would get so upset that they might retaliate with, say, A SPANISH ARMADA. This is all Ron Paul wants now, and that's why he can't have it. [ TPM ]