Question: Isolation raises and their application

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After being throttled by a 60BB downstreak in the last 2 days (Which was somewhat attributed to tilt, but that's another story. I must haste to say that tilt sucks.) I'm taking a deep look into my game, I'm rereading SSHE, and I'm cursing my original good fortune when I started playing. One thing that I think I'm misapplying is the use of isolation raises. For example:

PokerStars 0.25/0.50 Hold'em (10 handed) converter

Preflop: Hero is CO with A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], 9[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img].
<font color="#666666">1 fold</font>, UTG+1 calls, <font color="#666666">2 folds</font>, <font color="#CC3333">MP2 raises</font>, <font color="#666666">1 fold</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Hero 3-bets</font>...

MP2 was a huge maniac. I've seen him limp-reraise 59s, 76s, and worse. My default play is of course to fold. But against someone who was playing extremely loose and aggressive, I thought I'd make a move and try to isolate him.

My questions are, what hands can you make these types of plays with? Secondarily, against a maniac, would it just be better for me to wait until I have a better hand?

Also, against very loose players before the flop, what is the hand range I can safely raise with? Personally, my post-flop play is not up to snuff to even try these anymore. But I'd like to have some ideas so when I do feel comfortable with it, I won't be spewing.