Politics

There is a chance that John Kasich may end up being the one and only person responsible for picking the next U.S. president – all thanks to an old 130-year-old law.  The federal law has been on the books since 1887, and there’s a possibility that the law could be used this election. Politico.com reports: It starts with a serious ballot dispute in November, something like the contested results in Florida during the 2000 election—the odds of which aren’t trivial.

Last Thurssday, the Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Joseph Dunford testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). The topic? The President’s defense budget request for next year.

The nearly three-hour hearing covered everything from the fight against ISIS in Syria to NASA’s research and development projects. But what was remarkable, other than senators using valuable time with Secretary Carter to broker pet projects, was the evident reevaluation of threats to the U.S.

Ross Douthat takes Paul Ryan to task for not being more aggressively hostile to Trump:

Yet when he’s asked about the threat that Donald Trump obviously poses to “who we are,” the speaker — despite his admirable willingness to condemn specific Trumpian outrages — can’t bring himself to make a counterendorsement, or voice explicit opposition to Trump’s progress. “I have to respect the primary voter,” he says. “It’s not my decision, it’s their decision.” And, “We’re going to have to work with whoever our nominee is.”

The New York Times reported over the weekend on the desperate lengths to which some anti-Trump Republicans are prepared to go. If they are unable to stop Trump’s nomination, some Republicans are thinking about launching an independent presidential bid for the general election:

It’s probably fair to say that there are more question marks swirling around the 2016 US presidential election than any race for The White House in recent memory.