PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE: …Democrats in the Legislature contend the contract is illegal because it’s an end-around of the Legislature to allow keno games in taverns and clubs.

“And I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence,” Obama said. “In some cases, that may make it a little bit less exciting, but it will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe won’t have to examine our consciences quite as much.” …

It was an ugly stumble for the NCAA, coming less than a week after its annual convention resulted in another round of reforms intended to firm up recruiting rules and other guidelines. And it comes as the organization faces more than a half-dozen lawsuits that could reshape how it does business, including one challenging the $60 million in penalties levied against Penn State for the Jerry Sandusky scandal…

Most alarming was the atmosphere of intellectual dishonesty that swirled through the highest levels of America’s war on terror. The Pentagon banned American officers from using the word “insurgency” to describe the nationalist Iraqis who were killing them. The White House decided that if it refused to plan for an occupation, somehow the United States would slide off the hook for running Iraq. Ideas mattered, and many of the most egregious foul-ups of the era stemmed from abstract theories mindlessly applied to the real world

The Ernst & Young report, and the controversy surrounding its release, presented an ethical dilemma for Lancaster Newspapers, Inc.

In evaluating its four “scenarios” for the proposed convention center, Ernst & Young assumed the publicly-owned center would be attached to a privately-owned hotel. The hotel would be adapted from the former Watt & Shand building on Penn Square, according to the study.

The news is a blow for Britain’s Conservative-led government, which a day earlier defended its austerity program against criticism from the International Monetary Fund. It needs solid growth to meet its budget targets, keep a triple-A debt rating and bolster its chances of winning a 2015 election…

… it’s time to end the fiction that the Second Amendment grants an absolute right to own a gun and to enact reasonable gun controls that will restrict access to the assault weapons and large capacity magazines used in the mass shootings that have scarred our national consciousness and ripped families apart.

NEWSMAX: …In the keynote address at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting, [Louisiana Gov. Bobby] Jindal said the GOP doesn’t need to change its values but “might need to change just about everything else we are doing.”…

The average number of children Afghan women can expect to have in their lifetime fell from 8 in the 1990s to 6.3 in the mid-2000s and to 5.1 at the end of the decade, a USA TODAY analysis of birth data found…

WHTM 27: …Reed Exhibitions, which organizes the show, says it made the decision after controversy surrounding its decision to limit the sale or display of military style assault weapons and high capacity magazines and clips. As of Wednesday, over 200 vendors had pulled out of the show. A Facebook page dedicated to boycotting the show currently has over 18,000 fans…

In a speech rooted in the nation’s foundational texts, and on the same day as Martin Luther King’s birthday, the president’s words were a reminder that even though America has come a long way on civil rights, there are still miles left to go in that journey.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: Gov. Corbett said Wednesday that he would not slash funding in his forthcoming budget for basic education or the four state-related universities, although he cautioned that could change if there was no legislative giveback on one of his priorities: reining in public-employee pension costs.

“Smoking is the No. 1 preventable cause of death in the U.S.,” says Tim McAfee, a co-author of the study. “We need to do more to educate the American people about these findings,” adds McAfee, director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

LEHIGH VALLEY MORNING CALL: The number of charter schools hitting testing benchmarks plummeted after the federal government said the state Education Department graded them too leniently.