Glen Johnson at the Washington Post certainly thinks Mitt is setting the stage. But he’s not unique in that regard. Everyone who is anyone who has a finger on the American political pulse probably knows Romney is ready to run again.

I say, I’m all in. And it all starts with a book tour next month.

While former Alaska governor Sarah Palin sparks more passion among many Republicans and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee conveys more folksy charm, Romney is waging the most deliberate and methodical campaign of any GOP presidential contender in at least two decades for the nomination in 2012.

After spending the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency out of the public eye, Romney will launch a 19-state, three-month tour next week to promote his new book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. Included are speeches and appearances in the states that hold early contests in 2012, including Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

The book’s subtitle might as well be The Case for Mitt Romney.

There are a number of reasons why Mitt Romney is the early favorite. He obviously was McCain’s best challenger in the 2008 primaries and he has put in his time, campaigning for McCain and working hard for other candidates.

Additionally, his economic background make him a solid choice when it comes to policy. He could counter President Obama in that field, if President Obama’s Keynesian style approach continues to falter.

On the note of countering President Obama – Mitt Romney has a J.D./MBA from Harvard Law and Business. President Obama has a JD from Harvard Law. It would be nice to see these guys in a real, scholarly discussion about substance and policy. Like the nitty gritty details and theories and all that jazz. I’m dreaming though.

We’ll see what Romney does over the next year to get ready, but no one should be surprised when he says he is in the race.

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.

In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their–or at least their cell phones’–whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that “a customer’s Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records” that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.

Those claims have alarmed the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, which have opposed the Justice Department’s request and plan to tell the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that Americans’ privacy deserves more protection and judicial oversight than what the administration has proposed.

“This is a critical question for privacy in the 21st century,” says Kevin Bankston, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who will be arguing on Friday. “If the courts do side with the government, that means that everywhere we go, in the real world and online, will be an open book to the government unprotected by the Fourth Amendment.”

This begs the age-old question – does the Constitution afford a right to privacy? This also poses a dilemma for the GOP, who on one hand has countered for years that a very slim, if any, right to privacy exists – especially when it comes to a woman’s right to choose – and also in terms of warrantless wiretapping. On the other hand, they can’t very well come out and say ‘we support the Administration’s decision to seek authority to track every cell phone in America.’

It also seems a bit hypocritical coming from a Democrat Administration to say there is ‘no reasonable expectation of privacy’ afforded by federal statute or the Constitution. They have, opposite the GOP, for years argued the Bill of Rights creates a right to privacy out of the shadows of other Amendments.

We’re working on the ‘right to privacy’ in my Con Law class right now, so this is an interesting topic. I for one don’t think a right to privacy gives a woman the right to abort a child, even though I think the Framers definitely intended for some zone of privacy to exist when they wrote the Constitution. The principles within the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 9th Amendments are broad enough to create a right to privacy, regardless of the abortion issue. The Court endorsed this in Griswold many years ago.

Indeed, some of the Constitution’s framers were worried that by enumerating the people’s rights, some would interpret the Bill of Rights to be our only rights. I certainly think there are unenumerated rights not listed in the Constitution. I think those rights, like all of our rights, come from God and while not necessarily as unalienable as are the enumerated rights in the Constitution, they still deserve to be protected. I think a right to privacy is one of those rights.

The difference between the warrantless wiretapping that was endorsed by the Bush Administration and this should be noted. The Bush Administration sought to wiretap the phone calls of terrorists not protected by the Constitution as part of prosecuting a war. The Obama Administration has not made clear how tracking the cell phones of all Americans pertains to the War on Terror, if at all.

With that said, what stands out to me is blatant disregard for the same ‘right to privacy’ the left depends on to defend abortion.

Policy experts at AEI seem to think the President’s budget and the QDR are contradictory.

The simultaneous release today of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report and the Fiscal Year 2011 budget proposal reveals the underlying contradiction at the heart of the Obama Administration’s national security policy.  As the second sentence of the QDR states, “first and foremost, the United States is a nation at war.”  But the remainder of the report and, more critically, the long-term budget, reflect an administration more interested in ending wars than winning them, and ready to “manage” American decline rather than preserving American leadership.

The last sentence could be flushed out in much more detail in regards to International Relations Theory – something I would like to do, but I don’t see how it’s possible considering I don’t have an IR class this semester. In brief, liberals (President Obama) make the argument that a hegemon isn’t needed to maintain the International system. Hegemonic realists, however, would argue quite the opposite. The exit question is this: is President Obama seriously “managing” American decline?

I seriously doubt any President or for that matter any American is with serious vigor thinking about managing the U.S. decline to less than the world’s only superpower – either relatively or in absolute terms. At least, I hope not.

Without further digression, I think President Obama does face the conflict of reconciling his approach to international relations with that of the broad American populace. I think it’s the commonsense view, if only because it has for so long been the only view, that if one person grows stronger, we grow weaker. President Obama defiantly declared in China that all countries could grow the pie together.

To conclude, it’s interesting to note the difference between the opening paragraphs of the QDR and what has been seemingly President Obama’s track on international relations and the role the U.S. military will play in the future. Certainly, President Obama is interested in ending our wars abroad. Does that mean he’s not committed to winning them? Not necessarily – that is entirely based on one’s definition of victory. I think the QDR most likely reflects a more “true to life” version of President Obama’s international relations theory.

Mount Olympus?

There was quite a fuss over President Obama’s remark in the State of the Union that the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to special interest in its Citizens United opinion.

The President’s comments in full: “With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections. (Applause.) I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. (Applause.) They should be decided by the American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.”

There is something to be said about the President’s own inaccuracies, but many have already done so and I won’t be redundant.

I’m writing to address the response by Dr. Larry Sabato. Professor Sabato, as I hope to have the privledge of calling him next semester, responded to the President’s quote, Justice Samuel Alito’s response and the response of the media by writing for Politico.com.

In part he wrote that,

“Mr. Obama’s blunt attack on the Court’s ruling, with the members sitting in front of him, was no doubt stunning and unsettling to some, and it contradicted his frequent calls for bipartisanship and civility.

…

“At the same time, President Obama had every right to denounce a decision that is fundamentally at odds with his beliefs.

…

“Still, I believe the members of the Court are entirely too sheltered by lifetime tenure as well as often-obsequious deference to them during their public appearances. Comfortably ensconced on the constitutional equivalent of Mount Olympus, they can seem oblivious to the real-world consequences of their rulings. It is good for them to be challenged in public by the President and others.

…

“No one wants a brawl, but it is good for the Court to be reminded that it is not a hermetically sealed institution—and it’s good for the President to be reminded that how he says something is often as important as what he says.”

Professor Sabato has written before on his opinion that the Court is far too sheltered from the rest of American political development. He has argued against lifetime tenure, insteading pushing for non-renewable terms.

I think, however, the President’s comments and the response of many to the Court’s ruling exemplifies the very need for lifetime tenure and entirely insulated from “politics.”

Think for a moment if members of the Supreme Court did not have lifetime tenure. Would they have been more or less likely to issue a ruling many members of the current political party in power openly disagree with? Surely, less is the obvious answer. On the other hand, if Republicans were in power would they have been more or less likely to issue the ruling from two weeks ago? Obviously, more.

But because our Judges are appointed for a lifetime and need not to worry about being removed merely because of an opinion, they can issue opinions they deem as proper interpretations of the law.

Much can be said about campaign finance laws that restrict the voice of many, merely because they have more money, but that’s not the point at hand here. It is to say that because judges are relatively unaffected by partisan tides or the ebb and flow of political opinion, they can make decisions that perhaps in the long run are more beneficial to the Union as a whole.

Professor Sabato argues for non-renewable terms in his book “A More Prefect Constitution.” The problem with non-renewable terms is that Judges would still then be forced to worry about what to do once they leave the Supreme Court. A Judge who knows that in 10 years he will need to find another job, in my opinion, is more likely to curry favors or partisanship in his or her opinions.

The Supreme Court is an institution with a valuable role in American political development. The necessity for judicial review of both the Executive and the Legislative branch requires that the Court be immune to the factors that influence those branches and thus be immune to any influence those branches may attempt to exercise.

I think, Professor Sabato, fails to see this argument because he thinks “politics is a good thing” and indeed it is. But for American political development to operate as it was intended to and to ensure the Executive doesn’t ignore the Legislature and to ensure that neither the Executive nor the Legislature ignore the Constitution, an independent Judiciary is absolutely necessary.

In his remarks to the American people, which by the way came three days after the attempted terrorist attack and in the middle of the afternoon on a Monday which most Americans were working, President Obama condemned the attacks and called it a “serious reminder of the dangers we face.”

He failed to address, however, the real problem: radical, religious extremism, specifically, radical, Islamic extremism.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a radical, Islamic extremist and that extremism alone remains the greatest to the United States of America. President Obama, and others, have failed to address that point.

Political correctness is causing problems, especially when it comes to airport screening. Mark Steyn accurately addressed this by saying “you can congratulate yourself on how impeccably multi-cultural and non-discriminatory you are, but people are going to die because of it. Fourteen people died at Fort Hood because of political correctness.”

More people could have died on NWA Flight 253 and more people could die in the future because we’re to afraid to admit that radical Muslims are the ones trying to blow up our buildings and airplanes.

It’s difficult to say this without coming across as discriminatory, but that’s the honest truth of it.

“Alarming” revelations this weekend about Iran’s peaceful uranium enrichment program show that it may not be so peaceful after all. CNN picked up on the story this morning, citing a Western diplomat, but the UK’s Times Online had the story yesterday.

Confidential intelligence documents obtained by The Times show that Iran is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb.

The notes, from Iran’s most sensitive military nuclear project, describe a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion. Foreign intelligence agencies date them to early 2007, four years after Iran was thought to have suspended its weapons programme.

An Asian intelligence source last week confirmed to The Times that his country also believed that weapons work was being carried out as recently as 2007 — specifically, work on a neutron initiator.

The technical document describes the use of a neutron source, uranium deuteride, which independent experts confirm has no possible civilian or military use other than in a nuclear weapon. Uranium deuteride is the material used in Pakistan’s bomb, from where Iran obtained its blueprint.

“Although Iran might claim that this work is for civil purposes, there is no civil application,” said David Albright, a physicist and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, which has analysed hundreds of pages of documents related to the Iranian programme. “This is a very strong indicator of weapons work.”

This highlights the problem of President Obama’s international relations thought on dealing with Iran. The truth of the matter is we really do not know what we are getting from them and if it in any way resembles the truth. Clear information is very important when it comes to resolving conflicts short of war and what we’re getting from our discussions with Iran and other major powers on the nuclear issue is anything but clear.

Legitimate Democracies do not go to war with legitimate Democracies because of dispute-resolution mechanisms and clear information. Iran is not a legitimate Democracy, evidenced by the fraudulent elections this summer.

My lack of faith in engagement should not imply support for a get tough approach. There are no indications that worked either, evidenced by the failures of the Bush Administration to prevent Iran from getting to this stage in the development process.

The point is however to say that something, albeit I am not sure what, needs to be done if we are truly determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

White House Photographer Pete Souza

President Obama in his address on “the Way Forward” in Afghanstian said he would commit 30,000 new troops to the war-torn country, but stipulated they will begin withdrawing in 18 months.

I recognize the tough political position President Obama is in. The left is already blasting him for creating a “surge” and the right, though more friendly than the left, is upset at the timetable.

His decision reflects the difficulty of bridging domestic politics and international relations. Throughout U.S. history, policymakers have faced this dilemma. Moreover, throughout the recorded history of international relations, policymakers have faced this dilemma. How does one reconcile the “national interest” with public opinion, the influence of democratic institutions like Congess and other political interests, i.e. the people who donate money and drive your policy?

President Obama was elected on a platform of change. Thus is his difficulty of continuing the war in Afghanistan much the way his predecessor did and thus is the reason for the timetable – to pacify his political pace. You can’t blame him, it is an obviously necessary move if he doesn’t want to ruin his party’s midterm elections in 2010 or his reelection campaign in 2012.

Having admitted that I understand his logic and reasoning for implementing a time table, I still have to share my distaste. I hoped that the President might put politics aside for the sake of victory.

It comes down to this question: do we have a vital interest in a peaceful and allied Afghanistan? I would answer yes and say furthermore, we have an interest in a peaceful and allied Middle East. That includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and beyond. Because defeat in Afghanistan would allow the Taliban to operate functionally, Afghanistan is a country of vital interest to the security of the United States. Lest we not forget from where the terrorist attacks of September 11 were orchestrated.

The President disagrees, I believe and has done so by making evident his lack of desire to achieve total victory in Afghanistan. He has scaled back the war on terror, actually ended it, and this move further reiterates that point.

The President has developed an exit strategy not predicated on victory. He has done so for the two reasons I already mentioned: (a) domestic political influence and (b) failure to understand the vital importance of a peaceful and allied Afghanistan.

There’s been a lot of talk about Sarah Palin in recent weeks. Her book tour as thrust her back in the national spotlight a little over a year after her defeated bid for the White House with John McCain.

Her book, Going Rogue, sits loftily on top of the New York Times Bestseller List. She sold 700,000 copies in the first week and that is undoubtedly only the beginning. People have waited in lines for hours, in mid and late November, mind you, to meet the former Governor of Alaska.

The Associated Press reported last week Palin sold 700,000 copies of her memoir in its first week, a number that far surpasses most political books.  But it falls short of the more than 900,000 copies sold of Bill Clinton’s 2004 memoir “My Life” during its debut week.

As a conservative, I was supportive of her candidacy for the Vice President and thought John McCain made an excellent decision when he picked Palin to be his running mate. Had he not, the landslide victory for Barack Obama might have been an even bigger landslide.

No one can say for sure what Sarah plans to do over the next four years, but it appears she is in the early stages of mounting a campaign for President.

There is obviously no litmus test for who is qualified to be President. No one, I think, is truly qualified to do the job. Sarah Palin is just as capable of making decisions that affect the country and the world as anyone else. I say this because I believe no one is capable or qualified to make the decisions. Rather, all we can do is send up the best person we have and hope they don’t screw it up.

With that said, Sarah Palin isn’t the best person we have.

I love Sarah Palin. She excites people, she motivates people and she is an unapologetic conservative. But she is not a viable candidate. She is not the right kind of person to be President. Sarah Palin is better suited for an AM talk radio show rather than the situation room.

I firmly believe America needs a President much like the one we have now. Not that I agree with his politics or philosophy, but Barack Obama is a smart and capable man. A smart man who has excelled at every stage in his life. The people around him have attested to his ability and desire to work on policy rather than politics, and we all know he gives a good speech. In short, we have the right type of man as President now, just not the right one.

Sarah Palin isn’t the type of person I want to be President. She’s not a thinker, not a decider. Yes, she’s inspirational and yes she’s exciting, much like President Obama, but she isn’t necessarily intellectual. She isn’t a visionary or leader like Reagan.

I don’t oppose a Sarah Palin Presidency for who she is, but rather for who she is not.

Symbolically, it is somewhat significant. Historically, it might not matter at all. Addressing the latter first, it should be duly noted that although President Obama is the fourth fastest President to fall below 50 percent, every President but John Kennedy since Harry Truman has done so.

Although the current decline below 50% has symbolic significance, most of the recent decline in support for Obama occurred in July and August. He began July at 60% approval. The ongoing, contentious debate over national healthcare reform has likely served as a drag on his public support, as have continuing economic problems. Americans are also concerned about the Obama administration’s reliance on government spending to solve the nation’s problems and the growing federal budget deficit. Since September, Obama’s approval rating had been holding in the low 50s and, although it has reached 50% numerous times, it had never dropped below 50% until now.

Of the post-World War II presidents, Obama now is the fourth fastest to drop below the majority approval level, doing so in his 10th month on the job. Gerald Ford dropped below 50% approval during his third month in office, and Bill Clinton did so in his fourth month. Ronald Reagan, like Obama, also dropped below 50% in his 10th month in office, though Reagan’s drop occurred a few days sooner in that month (Nov. 13-16, 1981) than did Obama’s (Nov. 17-19, 2009).

Of all the Presidents who dropped below 50 percent, Truman, Richard Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush were all re-elected. Only Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were not.

Which way will things go for President Obama? The answer probably depends on health care and Afghanistan.

If Congress is able to work through health care reform, with or without a public option, the President may be able to claim victory and use this as a spring board in the 2010 mid-term elections and then in 2012. Also, if his Afghanistan decision is well received with the public, his numbers could rebound.

These are only two of the issues President Obama will have to address and it is still early in his term. But, the President’s opportunity to get his agenda passed is slowly waning. Next spring will be his last opportunity with this Congress. After elections in 2010, he’ll have the early part of 2011, but after that campaigning will begin again for 2012.

In sum, the trend for President Obama probably means little, if anything at all. Nonetheless, it has to be troubling for a President who was so popular just 10 months ago to have fallen this far.