Something spooky about Lahaina fest

A longstanding dispute between the Native Hawaiian group Kuleana Ku’ikahi and the sponsors of a Lahaina Halloween party has finally wound up in court: more of a trick than a treat.

Let’s face it: Bad behavior of some kind comes part and parcel with the annual spookfest. Whenever and wherever that’s happened, the best remedy has been to crack down on the troublemakers, not ditch the entire event.

But the group has sued for a restraining order, listing among the problems the nudity and drinking in which some revelers engaged. Also — and this was probably the ultimate trigger — somebody urinated on a small island known as Moku’ula, considered sacred by Hawaiians.

That’s sophomoric and the fete should be relocated or the site otherwise protected from a recurrence. But stop the whole party, a popular Halloween event for a town needing a diversion? Scary, that is.

Inouye takes a hit from ID theft

Recall, if you will, those identity theft commercials, depicting theft victims recounting the experience with voices clearly not their own.

Hearing a man’s voice as an elderly woman mouthed the words. A young woman’s voice as an elderly man "talked." Now imagine U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye’s sonorous voice coming out of a 20-year-old Atlanta woman’s mouth, saying he’d been ID-victimized.

That imagery comes to mind as news hit that a woman has been accused of stealing and using Inouye’s credit-card info. The case is pending, but remember — no one is safe from ID theft, not even the head of the Senate’s money committee.