The St. Louis Post-Dispatch on how Carlson and Lemon personified much of what’s wrong with cable news today:

Two of the loosest cannons in America’s cable news fleet were unceremoniously rolled overboard Monday, and the country will be better for it. Though unrelated, the sudden, simultaneous firings of Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon from, respectively, Fox News and CNN appear to share some themes: Both hosts had quasi-journalistic perches from which they routinely disseminated ideologically strident opinion (and, in Carlson’s case, dangerous disinformation) — and in both cases, their own undisciplined mouths got them in trouble with their bosses. It’s too early to tell if their firings represent a movement in cable news away from the ramparts of the culture wars and back toward balanced reporting, but it’s an encouraging sign.

Debating opinions is the whole point of editorial pages like this one, while televised news shows are in theory supposed to be primarily about offering the latest news — or at least they once were. But cable talking heads like Carlson and Lemon have for years now pioneered a kind of hybrid position, somewhere between traditional news anchor and openly opinionated commentator, presenting elements of both. The competition between their networks often caused them to ratchet up the outrage in the quest for ratings.

In these hotly partisan times, Americans sort themselves in all kinds of ways, including what kind of ideological spin they want on their news. The straight-up-the-middle, Walter Cronkite model can still be found on the legacy network newscasts, but many cable news personalities are fully engaged participants in today’s ideological skirmishes.

None more so than Carlson, whose irresponsible spreading of blatant lies regarding the pandemic, the Capitol insurrection and the Ukraine war — as well as a level of racist animus rarely so openly expressed in mainstream media today — has palpably contributed to America’s divisions. It’s disturbing that he was apparently fired not for any of that but for his contempt for Fox’s management, as revealed by the recent Dominion libel suit against the network. Still, the cableverse will be a safer place for however long this rhetorical terrorist is out of it.

Despite some commonalities from their opposite ends of the political spectrum, Carlson and Lemon weren’t two sides of the same coin. Lemon’s liberal commentary was often out of line during reporting on serious news events like the Ferguson riots of 2014, but he didn’t engineer blatant, potentially deadly lies in the way Carlson did. From CNN’s viewpoint, Lemon’s primary offense was his penchant for embarrassing, foot-in-mouth moments like his recent declaration that women are only in their “prime” through their early 40s.

So, yes, the cable networks that for years put up with Lemon’s left-leaning activism and Carlson’s white-nationalist-coddling lies ultimately fired them for what we’d argue were lesser offenses. That’s not ideal, but if it prompts other cable personalities toward the kind of responsible behavior that eluded their two dismissed colleagues, it’s worth something.

The Herald Bulletin on how now is the time to resolve debt crisis:

It’s been more than three months since the United States hit its $31.4 trillion debt limit, and our leaders in Washington are still nowhere near finding a solution.

This nation deserves better.

Instead of real leadership, we get posturing. The plan Speaker Kevin McCarthy pushed through the House has no chance of clearing the Democratic Senate or of gaining the signature of President Joe Biden.

The plan wouldn’t even end the crisis.

It would simply postpone the standoff until next spring, at a time when our elected representatives will be even more consumed by politics, squarely in the middle of a presidential election campaign.

The package raises the nation’s $31.4 trillion debt limit by $1.5 trillion, but it also requires Congress to revisit the issue by the end of March.

Billed as an opening move in negotiations, this so-called “Limit, Save, Grow Act” spares the Pentagon budget but makes sizable cuts to domestic programs, returning funding for federal agencies to 2022 levels while limiting budget increases to 1% per year. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the measure would trim the deficit by $4.8 trillion over 10 years.

As part of the 320-page bill, the GOP also proposes to block Biden’s plan to grant student loan forgiveness, while repealing green energy tax credits and killing new funding for the Internal Revenue Service.

The measure would also give Congress more power to halt regulations from the executive branch, and it would expedite new oil drilling projects while rescinding funding enacted to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The bill increases work requirements for those receiving food stamps and adds similar mandates for those on Medicaid and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.

The plan has no chance of becoming law, but it’s long past time our federal lawmakers had this debate.

They need to trim the fat where they can and fund the programs worth keeping.

Above all, they need to stop threatening to drag our nation’s economy over a cliff.

It’s fine for Congress to debate future spending. That’s what our federal lawmakers were elected to do.

But it’s time to get rid of the debt ceiling. The full faith and credit of the U.S. government should never be held hostage by partisan bickering.

The clock on this debate is ticking. The Department of the Treasury has been using cash on hand and budgetary maneuvers to keep the government afloat, but those tricks will stop working soon, some say as early as late May.

These recurring fights over the nation’s debt have generally been resolved without doing serious economic damage, but we should not forget what happened in 2011 when a similar standoff led Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the U.S. credit rating for the first time in history, rocking financial markets around the world.

An actual default would be far worse, causing interest rates to skyrocket and the basic functions of the federal government to falter. Lots of Americans would lose their jobs.

Congress needs to stop these games. The American people should demand it.