Ron Paul sure is a creative and well versed sob.  I swear he must really know the constitution better than anyone I'll ever meet.  He found an old clause in the founding document that allows essentially for bounty hunters to be contracted by the US government.  It turns out that his plan is to put a bounty on the pirates in international water, and let Americans who are up to that sort of thing find them, capture them, and turn them over to the American government for something less than the price of the US Navy's operations to do the same thing after something bad happens.

I have to say that I rather like the idea, but the problems are such.  A) how would the bounty hunters identify which ships are being operated by pirates? they will necessarily be less trained than Navy Seals C) The Navy Seals successfully rescued a man being held captive last week; what if someone with less skill causes the death of a hostage?

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Ron Paul, and I would have voted for him if he'd made it to the end, and I'm an even bigger fan of anything that will responsibly save the government money at this point.  But our recent experiences with Blackwater show that it just won't be that simple.  Granted, Paul wants to have each would-be-bounty-hunter post a bond that he will follow international war rules in their expeditions, which is something that Blackwater apparently never managed to do.  But again, what happens when they breakt he rules? Will we have to prosecute them?  Where would they be tried? Here or in the country closest to their capture?  What about collateral damage?  When they screw up and kill innocent people or destroy benevolent aid supplies will the offended country hold the US government responsible like the Iraqi people did?

It's a tough problem and I don't know that there is a good solution, but I can guarantee if I ever get to sail around the world, I will be HEAVILY armed.