U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, diagnosed with Stage 4 kidney cancer, sounded upbeat last week when she told KITV’s Paula Akana that she will undergo surgery on Tuesday to remove a lesion from her seventh rib.

Hirono, who revealed her diagnosis last month, already had doctors remove her right kidney. It didn’t slow her down, though. She’s been making headlines, challenging the Trump administration and the GOP on issues like health care, the environment and Native Hawaiian rights.

It’s good to hear that she expects to be back at work in short order, and we wish her a speedy recovery.

When defensive missiles miss, we worry

All things being equal, success is better than failure, we’d say. And if the experiment involves missile defense testing, the stakes are very high indeed. Things started well enough on Wednesday night, when a target missile launched from Kauai’s Pacific Missile Range Facility was detected and tracked by a defense system being developed jointly by the U.S. and Japan. But when it came time to intercept, the defense missile launched from a Pearl Harbor-based ship failed to hit its target.

Failure is a part of the regular development process, officials assured. Perfectly true. Still, the world feels considerably shakier lately, especially with North Korea ratcheting tensions. Success is better than failure.