Just in time for the weekend, Congress can finally take a load off. The payroll-tax-cut extension was approved by the House and Senate on Friday, sending the $150 billion measure to President Obama, who is planning to sign off on it today. In addition to cutting taxes for workers, the agreement will extend unemployment benefits and avoid a cut in doctors’ Medicare reimbursements through the end of the year. Even House Speaker John Boehner is relieved to have washed his hands clean of the debacle. “I support this measure and thank Chairman Camp and our conferees for all their efforts to resolve this issue in a constructive fashion,” he said in a statement after the House passed the bill.

Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Friday vetoed a bill to legalize gay marriage three days after the state Senate passed it and the state Assembly affirmed the vote, 41 to 33. While gay marriage has been a top priority among state Democrats this year, they don’t have the votes in the legislature to override a veto. New Jersey's gay-marriage proposal was one of several in the works. In Washington state, a bill legalizing same-sex marriage was signed into law by the governor Monday, and a similar initiative is working its way through Maryland’s statehouse.

Despite heavy bloodshed in Syria on Friday, thousands of Syrians participated in a nationwide protest, staging demonstrations in major cities where heavy shelling had been reported earlier in the day. Activists have been staging mass protests every Friday since unrest began a year ago, focusing on a different theme every week. Bolstered by the U.N. vote to back a plan calling for President Bashar al-Assad’s resignation, protesters focused on “popular resistance,” rallying in the streets of Daraa, Homs, Hama, and Damascus and chanting for an end to Assad’s reign. At least 56 people died on Friday amid the protests, including 12 military defectors who were executed in Daraa.

Another vote, another win for gay rights—this time in Maryland where the House of Delegates voted to approve gay marriage. The measure passed by a thin margin—71 to 67—and now heads to the Maryland State Senate, which is expected to approve the legislation. A similar bill failed to gain enough votes in the House last year. Gov. Martin O’Malley, a strong proponent of gay marriage, lobbied for the bill this week and will approve it once it passes the upper chamber. The news comes on the heels of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie vetoing a same-sex marriage bill in the Garden State.

The FBI and Capitol Police announced the arrest Friday of a man who was allegedly planning a suicide bombing on Capitol Hill. The arrest was “the culmination of a lengthy and extensive operation during which the individual was closely and carefully monitored,” the Capitol Police said in a press release, but “at no time was the public or congressional community in any way in danger.” The investigation, which reportedly included FBI agents who posed as al Qaeda operatives, ended when the suspect was snagged near the Labor Department with what officials say was a vest packed with faux explosives.

Mitt Romney supporter Frank VanderSloot is getting bad press, despite doing seemingly everything in his power to squash it. VanderSloot, CEO of the controversial dietary supplement company Melaleuca, Inc., is also national finance co-chair of Romney’s presidential campaign, and he has made a name for himself among journalists by threatening to file suit against bloggers, newspapers, and magazines that run negative pieces about him and his business. VanderSloot, a devout Mormon whose company has reportedly given $1 million to Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super PAC, has in the last month used the threat of defamation suits to force Forbes and Mother Jones to kill or force edits of articles not to his liking.

Anthony Shadid, the Pulitzer Prize winner and tireless foreign correspondent who died of an asthma attack while reporting from Syria Thursday, will be slipping one last story over the transom. Shadid died weeks away from a book tour to promote his third tome, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East, and publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has bumped up publication a month to Feb. 28 following his death. Shadid, who never shied from dangerous assignments, was one of four New York Times reporters captured and then freed by the Libyan government while covering the conflict there last year. His previous books, both of which dealt with issues of Islamic faith and the politics of the Middle East, have drawn wide praise, and early reviews of House of Stone promise no less.

Dutch Prince Johan Friso is in critical but stable condition after being buried by an avalanche while skiing in the Austrian Alps, police said Friday. The Austria Press Agency said the prince is at Innsbruck’s university clinic. Friso, 43, had been skiing with a group when he was buried by the piste, and it reportedly took rescue crews around 15 minutes to locate him. Friso is the middle son of Dutch Queen Beatrix, but he is not heir to the throne because he married Mabel Wisse Smit without his family’s permission.

The city of Newark, N.J., is manning up for what is expected to be a massive crowd outside of Whitney Houston’s funeral on  Saturday, held at the church she grew up in. The ceremony itself will be private, meaning throngs of fans and media are expected to surround the six-block area that law-enforcement officers are planning to cordon off. An all-star cast of celebrities are expected to attend, meaning worries over paparazzi and news cameras have been stressed. A family-only viewing was held on Friday afternoon in Newark prior to the invitation-only funeral that is said to include only 1,500 people. Gov. Chris Christie ordered flags to fly at half-mast Saturday in the state of New Jersey to honor Houston, a decision that has drawn the ire of critics.

You’d think the son of Jason Seaver on Growing Pains would have known better. Robin Thicke was arrested for pot possession in New York City on Friday when the R&B singer was caught smoking reefer in a Cadillac Escalade around noon. Thicke, 34, was apparently toking up in the passenger seat while the driver chauffeured him toward downtown Manhattan. Police charged Thicke with a desk-appearance ticket before sending him off to enjoy the rest of his day, though the drug bust was probably a bit of a buzzkill.

Embattled News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch arrived Friday at the London offices of his flagship paper, The Sun, in a crisis-management move after 10 current and former senior staff were arrested in connection to alleged corrupt payments to police and other public officials. There's been anger at the news organization over fears that Murdoch would clean house in a manner similar to his closure of another of his papers, News of the World, last year over the phone-hacking scandal—although the Sun has the highest circulation of any newspaper in Britain. Murdoch is expected to reassure his staff about his commitment to the paper, and Murdoch reportedly told his staff that a Sun on Sunday paper would launch "very soon."

Aretha Franklin, godmother to the late Whitney Houston, is scheduled to perform at the singer's funeral service in Newark's New Hope Baptist Church on Saturday. Her friend Stevie Wonder will also sing in the star-studded affair, as Oprah, Beyonce, Elton John, Alicia Keys, David Bowie, Bill Cosby, Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, and many others are expected to attend the invitation-only service. Houston's cousin, Dionne Warwick, filmmaker Tyler Perry, her mentor Clive Davis, and her sister-in-law and manager Patricia Houston are scheduled to speak at the church where she grew up.

An outsider he is not. Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum might have a tough time painting himself as a warrior against the status quo in Washington now that he’s released his tax returns. It turns out Santorum made $3.6 million as a “consultant” and also claimed a German luxury sedan as a business expense. Santorum has tried to paint himself as an average American and has focused on his humble roots as the grandson of a coal miner to connect with voters. He has tried to downplay his wealth on the campaign trail, highlighting instead his social conservatism.

First the fear of default and deep austerity cuts, then the riots and now this. Armed robbers overpowered a female guard Friday and broke into the Archaeological Museum of Olympia, stealing artifacts, police said. They tied and gagged the guard and took up to 68 small clay and brass statues and a gold ring, then left. The museum is built on the birthplace of the ancient Olympic games, and is considered one of the most important cultural institutions in Greece. But recent cuts to the museum staff show security is being affected, and Culture Minister Pavlos Geroulanos has submitted his resignation. The gods at Mount Olympus must not be pleased.

When you buy a T-shirt, you know it’s for real. Former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is all in for Knicks phenom Jeremy Lin. Palin was photographed on the streets of New York, holding a “Linsanity” shirt. She reportedly said that Lin is what America stands for—uplifting, positive, a true American story! But between Lin and Tim Tebow, she’s still undecided.

In the wake of the arrest of a public school teacher at the Los Angeles Unified School District earlier this month on allegations of sex abuse in Miramonte Elementary School, The New York Times looked at the way the district oversees its employees and how they interacted with law enforcement. Many other reports and allegations of abuse surfaced after the arrest, and there’s been an intense spotlight on why so many accusations of abuse were not reported to the police. There’s also been worries that many parents, who are Latino immigrants, were reluctant to report the allegations to the police because of their status.

German President Christian Wulff announced Friday that he was quitting over a scandal that he allegedly received favors before taking up his post in 2010, when Chancellor Angela Merkel nominated him for the job. The scandal began in December, when it was revealed that when Wulff was the governor of Lower Saxony, he had received a large loan from a wealthy businessman friend's wife. On Thursday, prosecutors took the unprecedented step of asking Parliament to lift Wulff's immunity, as they allege that he might have accepted benefits from David Groenwold, a German film producer. German presidents primarily function as a moral authority, and this latest affair doesn't help.

A federal immigration agent who shot and injured a colleague in their office Thursday night was killed by a third agent in a chaotic confrontation. The incident happened at the Glenn M. Anderson Federal Building in Long Beach, Calif., sparked by an unspecified dispute between Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Police told the Los Angeles Times that an agent repeatedly opened fire on a supervisor at around 6 p.m. local time, and after the supervisor was wounded, a third agent intervened and killed the gunman.

He's doing it without the help of his super PAC, so why not just get rid of it? President Obama raised $29.1 million for his campaign in January, putting him ahead of the pace that he set at the end of last year. The campaign announced the haul via Twitter on Friday morning, claiming that 98 percent of the donations were $250 or less. Obama has raised about $250 million for the 2012 election so far, and he averaged $23 million a month in the last quarter of 2011. All that money came before Obama announced this month that he would accept the support of shadowy super PACs that allow unlimited donations—do you really need to embrace that, Mr. President?

The New York Times's Beirut bureau chief, Anthony Shadid, died Thursday, the newspaper announced. He apparently died of an asthma attack in Syria. Tyler Hicks, a photographer with Shadid, carried his body to Turkey. Shadid was one of the journalists reported missing in Libya in March 2011. He was the Baghdad bureau chief of The Washington Post before joining the Times. In his 15-year career, Shadid won the Pulitzer for international reporting twice—covering the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2004 and its withdrawal in 2010.

Team Romney just lost a significant supporter to its biggest opponent. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced Friday that he's leaving the Romney camp for greener pastures, arguing that Rick Santorum has a better chance at winning. Mitt's campaign insists the switch is insignificant. "Nothing has changed," said Romney adviser and former New Hampshire governor John Sununu. "Attorneys general don't have that much of an organization." Sununu suggests DeWine's move stemmed from a pro-Romney super PAC ad that criticized Santorum for promoting voting rights for felons--something DeWine supports.

Oh where, oh where could Stephen be?! That was the question being hurled around by fans of comedian Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report after the show abruptly halted production this week “due to unforeseen circumstances.” The New York Post cited a source Friday that said the show was put on hold as Colbert tended to his ailing 91-year-old mother, who lives in Charleston, S.C. “They are a very private family,” the source told the paper of the Colberts. Stephen is the youngest of 11 children. Colbert told audiences on Monday that he had just returned from a week in South Carolina before the show was snipped later in the week. The show is said to return as early as next week, according to the source.

Violence has only escalated in Syria following the U.N. vote yesterday to back a plan calling for President Assad’s resignation. One opposition group told the BBC that shelling in Homs was the heaviest it’s been since troops stepped up their crack down nearly two weeks ago in attempt to break up the city’s rebel-backed Free Syrian Army. Rebels have also reported bombardment in Damascus and Deraa. Of the 137 member nations that participated in yesterday’s U.N. vote, Russia and China were among those that voted against the resolution, which called for Assad to hand over power to his deputy. The two countries had also vetoed a similar resolution two weeks ago. A senior Chinese envoy is scheduled to meet with President Assad, though the date of their meeting is not yet known.

Maine may go back and add the results of Washington County's delayed caucuses, putting Mitt Romney's victory in the state at risk. Mitt beat Ron Paul by only 200 points last weekend, but supporters of both candidates can be expected to turn out in droves for Washington County's vote on Saturday, because it is the only one taking place. Romney's win was purely symbolic, as the contest in which Maine's delegates will be awarded won't take place until the Republican convention. Still, the "beauty contest" win gave the impression of a comeback after three simultaneous losses to Rick Santorum. 

Following the bad old-man joke heard round the world, Foster Friess is now the center of political and media attention. The wealthy Rick Santorum financier already apologized for claiming that back in his day women avoided getting pregnant by putting a Bayer aspirin between their knees, but he can't erase the public's memory that fast. Former Republican senator Alan Simpson defended his Wyoming neighbor's comments, acknowledging that his joke was "bizarre" and "not appropriate." Still, he noted, "I know there is a fine line between smart humor and smart-ass, and I've crossed that and I think he did." Sen. Patty Murray told MSNBC that between Friess's comment and yesterday's Capitol Hill birth-control panel made up completely of men, "I feel like I'm waking up on a set of Mad Men." Rick Santorum personally thinks this whole controversy over his backer's words "is just crap."