We ought to be encouraged by a federal legal panel's decision rejecting the Obama administration's effort to scuttle unilaterally the billions of dollars and years put into the long-term repository for the nation's nuclear waste.

Encouraged, yes, except for the fact that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, rather than waiting for the U.S. Department of Energy to appeal, apparently seems raring to second-guess its own Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.

Candidate Barack Obama promised to end the Yucca Mountain project, which flouts the intent of Congress and leaves spent nuclear fuel piling up around the country.

But the NRC's panel noted the administration did not offer any scientific proof that Yucca was not a sound place for the waste, saying only it was "unworkable."

Unworkable politically, that is. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has long opposed the Yucca site in his home state.

Three of the five NRC members promised not to get in the way of Obama's Yucca decision at their confirmation hearings. The fourth, whom Obama appointed as chair, was Reid's former science adviser and, when he joined the commission in 2005, voluntarily recused himself from Yucca Mountain decisions but only for a year.

The deck certainly seems stacked here. The commissioners should do their duty and uphold their board's correct decision.

— The Seattle Times- -As CNN's Larry King heads into the sunset, the first 24-hour news channel faces a gaping hole in its primetime lineup. And we have ideas about what to do with that hole.Already, the network is making a dramatic change by bringing back a political debate show that sounds a lot like "Crossfire," circa the Clinton era. We expect a lot more, though, from Washington-based columnist Kathleen Parker and former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer than what "Crossfire" became in its later years. The tone of our national debate is sour enough without another nightly exercise of lining up talking points and flinging them across the table, food-fight style.The nightly menu of prime-time news show offerings includes a lot of high-pitched ranting, a lot of personal jabs, a lot of strident partisanship. Sure, there are other insightful interviews and a flood of information, but even with King's shortcomings, his show had its place. It was a rare time when you might catch an in-depth interview.The 24-hour cable news menu needs that kind of variety, so we hope CNN doesn't go all-in on the trend toward personality-driven, in-your-face political-dogma-as-sport shows. There are more than enough of those on both sides of the spectrum.No matter which direction CNN chooses, we hope the network will elevate our national discussion and remind us that there's more to life — even to current events — than constant bickering.

— The Dallas Morning News