ELECTION PREDICTIONS

How many seats will Democrats pick up in the U.S. House of Representatives?

How many new Democrats will be in the U.S. Senate? Enough to regain control of that club?

Our best guesses, based on too much reading:

•House goes to the Dems, 235-200.

•Senate splits 50-50. Claire McCaskill wins, 51-48. She gets 40.2 percent of the vote in Greene County.

In state issues:

•Missouri's Amendment 2 -- the stem-cell issue -- passes, 54-46.

•Amendment 3, the smoking tax, wins approval with a similar margin.

•The minimum-wage increase passes with 63 percent of the vote.

Your turn.

SIGN-STEALING PUNKS

We happen to support Amendment 2, the stem-cell research issue on the Missouri ballot. If you oppose it, good for you; just don't start with the false talking points about how this is cloning and we're all going to hell.

And whatever you do, don't go stealing signs. In Kansas City, an anti-2 homeowner is fed up with the tomfoolery. KMBC reports:

Whether it was a teenage prank or a political ploy, homeowner Shaun Jones videotaped someone taking campaign signs from his front yard on Northwest 87th Terrace early Monday morning.

"That's the only one they bothered," Jones told KMBC's Natalie Moultrie.

The video showed a group taking all 11 of his "Vote No on Amendment 2" signs.

"What have I done other than say this is what I feel, what I believe and how I'm going to vote?" Jones said.

Jones said it is the second time in a week someone has taken his signs. After the first sign disappeared, Jones set up his surveillance camera.

"It's kind of humorous. Part of me wanted to catch them and say, 'Hey, stop acting childish, vote the way you want to vote,'" Jones said.

But what you can't see on the tape is that whoever took the signs also decorated Jones' front tree with toilet paper and knocked over a flower pot on the front porch, Moultrie reported.

Jones said that other "vote no" signs in his neighborhood disappeared overnight as well.

"It was a calculated effort. They came to canvass the neighborhood and take signs away from people who want to speak out about an issue," Jones said.

Jones has replaced the stolen signs.

"I didn't want them to take my signs. I want to be able to vote and speak out this way. I feel like that's been taken away from me," Jones said.

Jones said he is giving a copy of his surveillance tape to police since taking political signs from someone's front yard is considered stealing personal property.

Dude had 11 No on 2 signs. E-le-ven. That's screaming out on the issue.

It is Halloween. Political yard signs will succumb to tricks. Treat yourself to a few straight pins through the top of your signs and see if that doesn't stop the snatchers.

WANT A LAUGH? READ BRIAN LEWIS

The assistant editorial page editor of the News-Leader shows off his lack of style with a Saturday column that reeks.

He claims to be a Christian, but his first sentence is anything but:

I hate news conferences when television personalities start hunting for sound bites.

Yeah, that Jesus was such a hatemonger.

Lewis apparently has problems with "television personalities" who want quotes:

Here are some of the questions one television personality asked: How do you define cloning? Is it a sin to vote for this amendment? Is it a sin to vote for this amendment? Is it a sin to vote for this amendment? Why then don't you just say it is a sin to vote for this amendment?

Sigh. Theological illiteracy meets gotcha journalism.

What are the brainstorming sessions like at these television stations? Religious folks oppose this. They must be shouting some irrational hoodoo. Let's catch them.

Yeah, "gotcha journalism." That explains why Lewis belittles the questions — and then prints the answers given by Alan Keyes and Rick Scarborough.

Lewis also shows his disregard for basic newspaper-writing style.

He notes a conversation with "Greene County Medical Society president John Mihalevich." Mihalevich is a physician. AP style calls for him to be referred to as "Dr. John Mihalevich" on first reference.

Lewis identifies Scarborough as "Rev. Scarborough" on second reference. A definite AP style no-no.

But hey, we shouldn't expect anything better from a guy who begins his column with the words, "I hate." We'd call him a "newspaper personality," but that gives him too much credit. Call him a "newspaper typist."

PREVIEWING THE MADNESS

Next week the opponents of stem-cell research come to Springfield to make a frenzied noise.

Alan Keyes and Rick Scarborough are scheduled to speak at the Central Assembly of God church on Sept. 21. But first they made a swing through the Kansas City area, rattling the rafters in a (largely empty) church in Raytown.

Kit Wagar of KC Buzz Blog provides the color:

The event was part religious revival, part science lecture, part prayer meeting and part call to political action against the "devilish science" of early stem cell research. Whatever your position on stem cells, you had to acknowledge that these speakers were good.

All speakers agreed that taking stem cells from fertilized human eggs or by cloning cells in the lab kills a microscopic human being. Keyes compared the research to slavery. To White Europeans, he said, slavery was justified because black Africans "were not like us." The same justification fits stem cell research, Keyes said, because the people in the Petri dish "are not like us."

"Slavery was all about greed," Keyes said. "Racism was just the tool to getting the money."

He warned that the targets of unethical research today might be in a Petri dish. But know one knows if tomorrow “some demagogue will make your blond hair, your brown eyes or your black skin the basis for some kind of abuse,” Keyes said.

Scarborough stalked the stage like a panther, urging church members to go to the polls to block the initiative and stop the killing of microscopic human people. He said Christians are citizens of heaven, but citizens of the nation as well.

"Don't buy the lie that we can't preach about this," Scarborough told the ministers in attendance. The left, he said, has politicized every moral issue, "even politicizing the killing of babies."

The stem cell initiative will pass, he said, only if "the church sleeps this one out." He bemoaned the tendency for 75 percent of church members to skip voting.

“This is a hill worth dying on,” he said.

But is it worth lying about? Scarborough said Amendment 2 forces voters to "decide whether it is legal to create a human being for the purpose of destroying it." That's not what Amendment 2 proposes. Scarborough probably knows this, but his circus act would suffer if he told the truth.