POLITICO: Many addicts inherit a brain that has trouble just saying no to drugs. A study in Science finds that cocaine addicts have abnormalities in areas of the brain involved in self-control. And these abnormalities appear to predate any drug abuse.

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POLITICO: A significant portion of low-income Republicans might not embrace Mitt Romney’s comment this week that he is “not concerned about the very poor” because they have government programs that serve as a safety net, according to recent polls.

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POLITICO: President Barack Obama on Friday will ramp up his efforts to help unemployed veterans find jobs by calling for $6 billion in spending aimed at service members returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration officials said.

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POLITICO: The road to passing Speaker John Boehner’s energy and infrastructure bill looks to be as bumpy as the highways it’s trying to fix. GOP leaders insist they will bring their energy-expanding and road-building plan to the floor this month, but it’s clear they have a ways to go before uniting the Republican Conference. And thanks to controversial additions like oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Keystone XL pipeline, Democrats won’t be any help.

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POLITICO: It’s no surprise that oil companies, labor unions, environmental groups and an association of pipe manufacturers would want to lobby Congress about the Keystone XL pipeline. But Quakers? The American Jewish Committee? The makers of John Deere tractors?

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POLITICO: It wasn’t supposed to be like this. When Republicans took over the House in a stunning 2010 landslide, it seemed a given that money would rain down on the newly ascendant party.

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POLITICO: Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith — once viewed as a potentially dangerous drag on his 2012 campaign — may quickly become an invaluable asset that helps him lock up the Republican presidential nomination.

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THE HILL: The Sierra Club disclosed Thursday that it received over $26 million from natural gas giant Chesapeake Energy Corp. between 2007 and 2010 to help the group’s campaign against coal-fired power plants.

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THE HILL: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner swung back at critics of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law Thursday, arguing that those detractors are pushing for a repeat of the financial crisis.

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THE HILL: A group of Republican senators introduced legislation Thursday that would wipe out automatic defense cuts by reducing the federal workforce by 5 percent and extending a freeze on federal pay through June 2014.

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THE HILL: Congressional Republicans are worried Mitt Romney’s propensity for verbal gaffes will hurt him in the fall. The former Massachusetts governor has had a series of foot-in-mouth moments that have set off alarm bells for the GOP and brought on gleeful attacks from Democrats.

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WASHINGTON POST: Judging from its unexpected jump into the most-read list, this graph showing the breakdown of care provided by Planned Parenthood’s health centers is proving useful to people. So here it is again, lifted from April. Note the light blue slice, which suggests that cancer screenings account for approximately one-sixth of Planned Parenthood’s activities.

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WASHINGTON POST: “Are students learning?” This question should be the focus of almost everyone’s efforts in higher education: administrators, faculty members, staff. It should also be the question asked by those interested in higher education: parents, employers, policymakers — well, just about everyone, including students and prospective students themselves.

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WASHINGTON POST: Facebook is friending the feds. The company has put political veterans in key executive roles and board positions. It’s also quickly built up a powerhouse Washington lobbying operation and established a political action committee to make it easy for employees to donate to candidates.

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WASHINGTON POST: A prominent Chinese human rights lawyer said Friday that Beijing police prevented him from meeting with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a sign of continuing heavy restrictions on the country’s beleaguered rights advocates.

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WASHINGTON POST: The American people, a small slice of them, have spoken, and they are none too pleased. The rest are yet to be heard, as the men who would be president march West, to caucuses Saturday in Nevada, where the unemployment rate is 13 percent, and then to Colorado and Minnesota on Tuesday.

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WASHINGTON POST: Executives of the Susan G. Komen Foundation gave a new explanation Thursday of their decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, but their contradictory statements failed to quell a rising controversy that led several of the organization’s affiliates to openly rebel.

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WASHINGTON POST: With the government’s monthly unemployment report expected Friday, economists predicted it will show that the United States added about 150,000 jobs last month, sustaining a modest momentum in the economy. The emphasis might be on modest.

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WASHINGTON POST: Israeli leaders on Thursday delivered one of the bluntest warnings to date of possible airstrikes against Iranian nuclear sites, adding to the anxiety in Western capitals that a surprise attack by Israel could spark a broader military conflict in the Middle East.

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WASHINGTON TIMES: Nevada fought hard to be the first Western state to vote in the Republican presidential primary, offering the chance to break out of East Coast issues and let candidates hone their appeals to the Wild West on everything from water rights to nuclear energy.

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WASHINGTON TIMES: The big drop in the unemployment rate in recent months to 8.5 percent from double-digit rates during the recession came at a fortunate time for President Obama, but economists say it as much because of young people dropping out of the labor market as it is the result of businesses adding jobs.

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WASHINGTON TIMES: Ending a week that began with consensus but fractured into contention, the Senate voted Thursday to strengthen insider-trading bans for its members, and in the process agreed to ban bonuses for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives.

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WASHINGTON TIMES: Gunmen intercepted a tourist minivan and snatched two female American tourists at gunpoint, along with their Egyptian tour guide Friday near St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai, the region’s security chief said.

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LOS ANGELES TIMES: In the calculus of cross-border human smuggling, Maria Lopez-Diaz allegedly concluded that black instead of brown equals green.

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LOS ANGELES TIMES: House Republicans threatened Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. with a criminal contempt of Congress citation Thursday, alleging the Justice Department has refused for a year to turn over key documents in lawmakers' investigation of the failed Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation.

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LOS ANGELES TIMES: Birds were singing. Insects were buzzing. And a large skunk suddenly appeared in the road in front of meteorologist Paul Pastelok as he drove to work in rural Pennsylvania.

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LOS ANGELES TIMES: Members of Congress are reacting sharply to a plan being considered by the White House to transfer abroad five of the most dangerous prisoners from Guantanamo Bay as a gesture to the Taliban in advance of Afghanistan peace talks.

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LOS ANGELES TIMES: The maker of the Lap-Band will no longer sell its product to clinics affiliated with the 1-800-GET-THIN marketing company — a blow to Southern California surgery centers that have built an empire implanting the weight-loss devices in people looking to shed pounds.

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LOS ANGELES TIMES: A U.S. proposal to step back from leading combat operations in Afghanistan by the middle of 2013 divided NATO on Thursday as some allies objected to being caught by surprise, and France suggested that the alliance completely end its involvement in fighting over the next two years.

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LOS ANGELES TIMES: As the backlash grew against the decision by Susan G. Komen for the Curefoundation to cease awarding grants to Planned Parenthood, Komen officials ended two days of silence on Thursday and tried to manage the uproar.

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LOS ANGELES TIMES: On a Strip packed with colorful, sometimes controversial gambling titans, Sheldon Adelson plays politics a little differently from the rest. The casino barons are a mostly pragmatic bunch, shifting campaign donations to favor the party in power.

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LOS ANGELES TIMES: A Cambodian court Friday rejected an appeal by a notorious Khmer Rouge jailer and extended his sentence to life in prison after dismissing his argument that he was a junior official only following orders.

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