A letter of marque is written authorization given by a State to private citizens to attack and take ships of the enemy. Hacked emails to and from Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State reveal that she was running a private government out of her house with a private and secret staff, dealing with foreign governments outside official State Department business. There are those who wonder where she got the money to hire the very expensive specialists who ran her secret government. Did she issue letters of marque? I spoke to the skipper of the twelve gun Baltimore schooner Jenny Lind today and he said the cruise to the Gulf was very successful, with fifteen tankers laden with sweet crude oil taken just off Aden and sent home with prize crews. He chuckled and said,

A sweet sailing ship is the Baltimore schooner
Her spread of stiff canvas eats into the wind
There’s plenty of prizes we should have got sooner
There’s naught on the sea like the sweet Jenny Lind
We caught a big tanker and boarded her quickly
And locked up her crew in the bilges below
Her captain was stiff and a tiny bit prickly
He said that his bosses at Exxon would know
I showed him my Letter of Marque and he squinted
And said that he knew the name written in ink
I took him aside and I more or less hinted
That he’d be remembered, which caused him to think
We captured more ships, he said, shaking with laughter
And sent them all home to be sold for cold cash
But what was the name, I said, what was he after
He said he imagined ‘twas put in the stash
He nudged me and said an election was coming
With Letters of Marque flying off of the shelves
The trade routes with swift brigs and schooners were humming
With papers fair signed by the Clintons themselves