Tea leaves get a good reading these days when it comes to the 2008 congressional elections. Political observers are trying to interpret what certain special elections around the county might say about the landscape come November. The latest supposed indicator comes Tuesday.

Maybe nothing went right for you last week.

The sign reads “Welcome to Bethlehem.” The name of the town, birthplace of Jesus, translates to “house of bread.” All that happens around this sign seems to meet a mission.

In the grand scheme of hare-brained ideas, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman offered a doozy over the weekend. He suggested presidential candidates level with the American people. Tell me, have you heard anything so outrageous?

ATCHISON, Kan. — Beginning in 1996, Jim Ryun got elected as a Kansas congressman five times. In November 2006, he lost.

Blossoms arrive as a sign of spring, as do the pictures of roofs blown from their rightful places.

Location, location, location. Bill Ewing spent 28 years as a banker and knows what traffic means to business success.

Environmental advocates want Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill along for the ride as they try to get climate-change legislation through Congress.

Members of the Northwest Missouri Central Labor Council have a goal in mind for the coming campaign season ... their members will not be uninformed when it comes to the nation’s health-care problems.

Ward Connerly looks back 44 years and can’t believe controversy surrounds him for speaking out against discrimination. “The 1964 Civil Rights Act was supposed to have resolved all of this,” the Californian told a gathering in St. Joseph on Monday. He came to the city to watch Northwest Missouri Congressman Sam Graves sign a petition for putting the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative on the November ballot. The proposed amendment aims to prohibit state and local governments from giving preferential treatment to people or groups based on race, gender, color or ethnicity in public employment, education or contracting.