By Doug Ross doug.ross@nwi.com, (219) 548-4360 or (219) 933-3357 Mar 06, 2013 at 3:50 pm

Have you wondered which Republican senators President Barack Obama invited to tonight's high-profile but private dinner at the White House? One of them is a Hoosier.

Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., plans to attend tonight's dinner, according to his spokeswoman, Tara DiJulio.

She forwarded this statement from Coats:

"I welcome the invitation to meet with the president this evening to discuss the critical challenges facing our country. This outreach is long overdue, and if the White House is serious about addressing our fiscal crisis, growing the economy and helping Americans find jobs, then it must abandon campaign tactics and focus on working with Congress. I hope to discuss ways both sides can work together on a credible, long-term fiscal plan, and it starts with leadership by the president and a willingness to recognize that spending is the real problem."

Who else is attending? Hard to say, but DiJulio shared the names of the other senators invited:

Mar 05, 2013 at 1:55 pm

Even though we're more than four years from the 2008 presidential election, the battles of that historic race are far from over.

In St. Joseph County, the former Democratic party chair and three former voter registration workers are facing an April trial over charges that fake signatures were put on petitions for presidential primary candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

St. Joseph County Democratic Party Chairman Buck Morgan and the three former Democratic voter registration workers — Dustin Blythe, Pam Brunette and Bev Shelton — face multiple charges related to the alleged forgery of signatures, including that of former Gov. Joe Kernan, on the petitions.

Meanwhile, a short-term budget bill introduced this week by House Republicans includes a provision to ban funding for the organization ACORN, a group that has essentially been out of business for three years. ACORN has long been a bogeyman of conservatives, who lambasted their voter registration efforts, which focused primarily on poor and minority communities.

You may recall that ACORN's Lake County voter registration drive was one of the worst in the nation for instances of fraud.

By Doug Ross doug.ross@nwi.com, (219) 548-4360 or (219) 933-3357 May 04, 2012 at 11:10 am

Beyond the headline -- Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock's 43-38 lead over incumbent Sen. Dick Lugar -- are some interesting plots and subplots on the graphs.

The big question after Tuesday, of course, is whether Democrat Joe Donnelly or the winner of the GOP primary will become the next U.S. senator from Indiana. My guess is Donnelly, and here's why.

The pollsters asked which candidate would be more likely to defeat the Democratic candidate in the fall. of Republicans, 38.2% said Mourdock and 38% Lugar -- a very close call. But independents who lean Republican favored Lugar, 42.6%, over Mourdock, 26.3%. Of Democrats, 70% picked Lugar over Mourdock (20.4%).

In the fall, there will be a lot of Democrats and independents voting. So unless the Republicans can cast enough straight-ticket ballots, Donnelly's odds are looking a lot better than they did a month ago, when the polls showed Lugar with a slight lead.

After sifting through the spreadsheets and other data from the Howey/DePauw poll on the Lugar/Mourdock race, some other facts became clear:

By Tom McDermott Jr. For The Times Mar 27, 2012 at 11:58 am

Editor's note: Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott, Jr. is sending updates to The Times while he's in China.

Final installment from China

I'm sorry it's been a couple of days since my last installment, but we've been very busy ever since we've arrived in China. Make no mistake about it, this is a working trip. It was totally financed by Chinese billionaires, and every minute is planned to the fullest extent possible. For instance, last night I only slept for four hours, which was more sleep than I've had in the past three days. These wealthy Chinese individuals were very generous to fly Hammond's delegation across the world, so lounging by the pool is not an option for us. Besides, it's been no higher than 8 - 13 degrees C in Beijing since we arrived (approx 45 F - 58 F for us Americans.)

On Thursday, we flew from Shahe City's airport to Guangzhou, which is translated in Mandarin to "Flower City." It was a three-hour plane flight south and the weather, we were told, would be similar to the weather in Florida. However, much to our luck, it was cloudy (or smoggy) and cool when we arrived at the airport (about 16 degrees C or 64F). I learned from Marissa, on that day, it was 87F in the region. How do you say "bad luck" in Mandarin? However, it was tropical & humid, so shirts were appropriate and comfortable.

We arrived at our hotel, met our Guangzhou sponsors, and had 20 minutes to get dressed in full suits so we could hurry across the city. We arrived 40 minutes later to a yacht full of very wealthy and powerful Chinese officials, who delayed the departure of our yacht until we arrived. I was thrown onstage in front of around 50 of these officials and drilled on the City of Hammond, and the advantages of investing there. Keep in mind, at this time, we had only landed 90 minutes earlier and we hadn't even unpacked. This was typical of our days in China, a fascinating journey for sure, but an absolute breakneck schedule.

By Tom Dabertin For The Times Mar 22, 2012 at 3:43 pm

Editor's note: Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott, Jr. is sending updates to The Times while he's in China.

Thursday's installment

The trip to China has provided us with all kinds of new insight into one of the world's largest economies and the most populous country. But it also provides each of us with a new appreciation of what our own country has to offer. Too often, we take our own freedoms for granted and let's face it, we have become too critical of our surroundings. Perhaps what we can learn most is to have a better gratefulness of what our nation has; a lesson that is learned by listening to the pride, dreams and hopes of the Chinese people. They take great pride in everything they have been able to accomplish, which is really mind-boggling when you look at the pace of their modernization. Although they readily admit that they have much work to do, it might be nice to capture some of the pride that they have in their nation in our own country. While they desire to be more like us, we may need to be a bit more like them!

It's also obvious, and embarrassing that the Chinese know much more about our country than we know about China. Case in point, we visited a park memorial about Guo Shoujing, who was an expert in a wide range of topics from classical studies, astronomy, mathematics and hydraulics. Now we know a bit about Confucius (ok, a very little bit), but nothing about Shoujing who built canals, solved flooding problems (his approaches are still used today), designed a functional clock, and mapped the stars almost 1,000 years ago. At the same time, they know about Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

Today, we said goodbye to our wonderful hosts in Shahe City and flew to Guangzhou (formerly Canton). This has to be one of the most beautiful cities on earth! Its China's third largest city, and located about as far south as Mexico. Its warm, humid, unbelievably clean and has a nightly light show along the Yingbin River that is stupendous. In many ways, the city, complete with palm trees, seems very metropolitan and does not have the Chinese architectural influences of other cities that we visited.

By Tom McDermott Jr. For The Times Mar 21, 2012 at 1:27 pm

Editor's note: Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott, Jr. is sending updates to The Times while he's in China.

Wednesday's installment

Shahe City, now officially Hammond's Sister City, was an awesome experience. Quite frankly, after leaving Beijing, I wasn't really expecting much from an industrial city of 150,000 people. However, after two days of a jammed packed schedule, I have to say Hammond and Shahe are a perfect match for Sister Cities. Both are industrial, both are in the shadow of a much larger city, and the people of both cities are wonderful.

Our first day (Tuesday) was action packed from beginning to end. In fact, we probably had WAY TOO MUCH jammed into a single day. We visited a Research and Development company for the manufacturing of glass that can only be compared to something you would see in the Silicon Valley (California). We visited a glass manufacturing company that was less than 10 years old. In fact, most of Shahe is brand new, they are undergoing a large expansion, expecting their population to increase by 300% in the next ten years. Believe me, when you see the new condominium skyscrapers and new infrastructure they are building, there is no doubt in my mind that their projections will turn out to be correct.

We also visited the Shahe Sanitary District plant, which processes the solid waste of the residents of Shahe City. Believe me, it did not smell like roses, although I learned that the Shahe plant uses their "clean" water to cool down their power plant, which I thought was a creative use of "dirty" water. Even their finished product in this plant was not close to drinkable. American environmental standards are markedly superior to those in China.

By Tom Dabertin For The Times Mar 20, 2012 at 9:08 am

We are traveling today from Beijing to Shahe City. The trip by bus takes about 5 hours. We will return to Beijing later in the week. By the way, while I am known as being anything but adventurous when it comes to food, I can unequivocally state that China Big Macs taste just like those in the US- I ate two last night!

By Thomas McDermott Jr. For The Times Mar 19, 2012 at 5:15 pm

We landed in Beijing on Sunday at around 4 p.m. after a 14 hour plane flight. The accommodations on the international flights impressed me, after all, the only time I have ever gone overseas was in my submarine. As you can imagine, the plane flight was faster, and less cramped. So I enjoyed flying much more than submarine duty!

By Doug Ross doug.ross@nwi.com, (219) 548-4360 or (219) 933-3357 Feb 07, 2012 at 6:18 pm

U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., is the king of the earmarks, right? Isn't that what conventional wisdom and past experience would have Northwest Indiana residents believe? Yet Visclosky wasn't mentioned in a Washington Post report Monday about the use of earmarks to fund projects near lawmakers' homes.

His colleague Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., is on the list, though. In 2008, the Washington Post reported, Donnelly earmarked $935,000 for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the Michigan City harbor about two miles down the road from the Donnelly family's expensive Lake Shore Drive vacation home.

Could the earmark come back to haunt Donnelly? Well, maybe, although it probably shouldn't.

"A spokeswoman for Donnelly said the city's mayor requested the project, it was vetted by the ethics committee and it had been funded by Congress 'in 14 of the last 18 fiscal years before Congressman Donnelly first took office' " the Washington Post reported.

But this is an election year, and a bizarre one at that, so anything is possible.

By Doug Ross doug.ross@nwi.com, (219) 548-4360 or (219) 933-3357 Jan 19, 2012 at 7:15 pm

News this week of campaign donations and campaign spending brings us back to a familiar axiom in politics: Money is power.

The highlights of this week's news:

• Indiana's leading Republican gubernatorial candidate, Mike Pence, raked in a record $5 million last year, with nearly $3.7 million cash at the ready now. The leading Democratic opponent, John Gregg, raised just $1.7 million last year, with $1.2 million cash on hand. The key point: Pence raised three times as much as Gregg.

• U.S. Sen Dick Lugar, R-Ind., is campaigning hard with a major TV commercial purchase in some key Indiana markets, though not including Northwest Indiana and Evansville. That spending dwarfs that of his opponent in the primary election, Richard Mourdock. Mourdock is buying time on cable TV.

This brings us back to that axiom that money buys power. That's certainly true for Crown Point billionaire Dean White, who was ranked by Howey Politics Indiana last week as the ninth most politically powerful man in Indiana.