No one should drink and drive. Drunk drivers who kill should be prosecuted for murder. It's a choice, and a bad one, to drive while impaired.

Given that, for a person to be convicted based on judicial unfairness, prosecutorial misconduct, her own counsel's incompetence (one might say malpractice), and the high profile of the victim, brings brightly to mind the term "railroaded."

Rohypnol remains classified as a Schedule IV drug, even though it has a substantial history of use in felony rapes, a significant potential for abuse, and has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. This drug is clearly not taken seriously enough by law enforcement. And the attitude of people who - not themselves being targeted by predators - assume that no one is, astounds me. Letter writers who know conclusively that because X has never happened to them, it has never happened to anyone, are as incomprehensible as flat worlders.

At an intimate talk story session with his loyal local followers last year, Ed Case surprised many of us by sounding more Red than Blue. He supported Bush on Iraq, lip-synched a balanced budget tune after voting for tax cuts, and even seemed enthusiastic about invading Iran. Last Year! He ignored the problem of vote tampering (which made me wonder if he might be hoping to be the beneficiary of some). He used the word "liberal" as a pejorative, and thereby lost the rest of his audience.

Case entered the senatorial race with the specious and indelicate argument that, should Akaka drop dead before completing his term, a Republican governor could fill his seat with another Republican. If that was his main concern, then he should have run for Governor. Ed didn't have the cojones for that battle.

While Akaka has certainly squandered and neglected his political capital, as noted by Time magazine, Ed Case is no prize. He scored even lower than Akaka with BOTH Project Vote Smart and Congress.org.

It's true that Hawaii should be replacing our aging Democratic senators, but we would prefer to replace them with other actual Democrats. The absolute worst thing I've heard about Case has been from his own press office: "He's his own man. He keeps his own counsel. He makes up his mind and sticks to it." Sounds too much like another psychopath currently in office.

I'd rather have an ineffective Democrat in the Senate than an effective neo-Republican wolf in sneak's clothing.

I just returned from voting for Akaka, although I too have concerns about his past and ongoing effectiveness as a Senator. What I find most appalling about Case, however, has been his contention that Akaka has tried to make the race about one issue, the war in Iraq. As if that's a Bad Thing. In my opinion, the war itself is simply the nexus of a staggering array of lies, abuses of power, and blatant incompetence. It starts with the opportunistic fabrication of a "war on terrorism,' following 9/11, leads through the squandering of international goodwill toward America engendered by 9/11, false premises for the invasion of Iraq, torture, disregard for our allies and for international treaties and conventions for conduct of war, killing more Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan than were killed on 9/11, killing far more Iraqi civilians than were killed on 9/11, destroying the country of Iraq, squandering 300+ billion dollars (and counting, rapidly), and all to create a breeding ground for anti-American resentment and future terrorists while soothingly reassuring us that it is all being done to combat terrorism. And this is just the briefest list of what the war in Iraq really means.

Case justifies his support for some of the Bush policies as reflective of a much-needed bipartisanship in Washington. In fact, Case and Lieberman both talk of bipartisanship, as if there has been a shred of evidence, somewhere, in six years of the Bush Administration, that it has any interest in this, whatsoever. There seems to be no sign that any Bush policies have actually been moderated as a result of the Administration seeking bipartisan consensus and cooperation. I then believe that Case, and his friend Lieberman, are naive in the extreme (or simply think voters are).

If Case has chosen this issue to distinguish himself as a moderate, and from the "liberal, left wing" of the Hawaiian Democratic Party status quo, it represents stunningly bad judgment. The issue of the war and its surroundings represents, in my opinion, the most important question our country has faced in modern times. Will we retain a somewhat viable version of our historical democracy, or will we continue our slide into the role of waning but still dangerous military superpower, with our decaying infrastructure, our insidiously weakening and outsourced economy, and our increasing one-party Republican rule?

I like some things Case has stood for. As a Congressman, he has had some pragmatic ideas for improving life in Hawaii, and he is from the Big Island of Hawaii, where I live. But, in the end, no amount of pragmatism and even well-directed youthful energy can offset this monstrous misjudgment. If he can't distinguish himself clearly and emphatically from this sinking Adminstration on the issue of the war in Iraq and its many malignant tentacles, then on which one?