Yawn.
Ron Paul suggested issuing letters of marque and reprisal, apparently oblivious that such letters aren't worth the paper they are printed on any more and that such letters wouldn't really apply in bin Laden's case.
Letters of marque and reprisal were originally issued by countries to encourage private citizens to harass the shipping of a rival power. The letters could be presented to any third party that tried to intervene against the privateers, because it demonstrated that they were not pirates but were under the legal protection of the power that issued the letters.
Of course, the letters were meaningless to the courts of the rival power, so privateers had to be very careful not to be captured.
The incentive these private citizens had was simple: they got to keep the cargo of any ships they were able to capture.
No country in the world recognizes letters of marque and reprisal any more - the United States certainly does not recognize them.
Even if they did and privateers could depend on them for protection, they are not likely to find too many terrorists on the high seas. They would have more success locating terrorists by hijacking airplanes, which in today's environment is impractical. Also, terrorists generally do not have cargoholds full of goods to incentivize privateers.
All this is moot, since we already have a program to encourage private citizens to hunt down bin Laden: a $50M bounty on his head.
So Ron Paul's "plan" is a non-plan which is already redundant.
How's the multi-billion dollar Nation building exercise going? Caught Osama yet?
Yeah... didn't think so...