Keystone XL picks up Senate backing  —  The Senate on Friday voted 62-37 to approve the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline in an amendment to Senate budget.  —  Sen. John Hoeven's (R-N.D.) amendment was largely symbolic, but served as a clear statement that the Senate backs the pipeline.

North Dakota Personhood Measure Passes State House  —  North Dakota became the first state on Friday to pass a fetal personhood amendment, which grants legal personhood rights to embryos from the moment of fertilization.  The state House of Representatives voted 57 to 35 to pass the amendment …

FAA To Close 149 Air Traffic Towers Under Cuts  —  (CHICAGO) — Under orders to trim hundreds of millions of dollars from its budget, the Federal Aviation Administration released a final list Friday of 149 air traffic control facilities that it will close at small airports around the country starting early next month.

Massachusetts lawmaker 'took pictures of his genitals and put them on a female coworker's computer'  —  A state representative in Massachussetts is being investigated after allegedly sending pictures of his genitals to a government computer.  —  The investigation is ongoing and the committee …

New York City Cop Testifies That He Was Told To Target Young Black Men  —  As hearings are under way to investigate New York City's stop and frisk policy, one police officer is testifying that he was told by superiors to target young black men between the ages of 14 and 21.

Gov. Christie says he does not believe in gay conversion therapy  —  Gov. Chris Christie speaks in Edison earlier this month.  Christie said today he doesn't believe in gay conversion therapy.  (Photo by Ed Murray/The Star-Ledger)  —  TRENTON — Under pressure from Democrats …

Obama presses Congress to vote on assault weapons ban  —  President Obama in his weekly address urged both chambers of Congress to hold a vote on a series of gun-control measures, including the controversial assault weapons ban and a limit on magazine sizes.

Miss Israel: Obama ‘world-class hunk’  —  President Barack Obama has earned a new title: world-class hunk.  —  That was the assessment of Miss Israel, the 21-year-old Ethiopian immigrant Titi Aynaw who met Obama on Thursday.  —  “He's an exciting man, a world-class hunk …

Late Marriage and Its Consequences  —  On Wednesday I had the privilege of joining a Brookings Institution event organized around the new report “Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage,” which tries to tease out the social implications of the steadily rising age of first marriage …

Andy at Ace of Spades has made an interesting discovery.  Here's Matthew Yglesias last September: … Silly wingnuts.  You didn't build that, and you don't own that.  The government is just letting you borrow it.  —  Speaking of “property” that doesn't really exist, Washingtonian.com reports:

Genachowski Announces Resignation as F.C.C. Chairman  —  The resignation on Friday of Julius Genachowski after four years as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission again raises a thorny issue for President Obama: whether it will be possible to get the F.C.C. or Congress to help …

Donald Trump Trashes Michelle Malkin On Twitter: You're A ‘Dummy’ And ‘Were Born Stupid’  —  So... looks like Michelle Malkin and Donald Trump are having a good ol' Twitter spat.  —  Malkin's conservative Twitter aggregator site Twitchy took to calling the real estate mogul and recent CPAC speaker Trump a “conservafraud.”

How Now Chairman Mao?  —  The Scrapbook doesn't spend a lot of its time surfing tired bureaucratic websites that look like relics of the 1990s, but our interest was piqued last week by a quotation on the “Kids' Zone” page of the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics …

Exclusive: Syrian with ties to 9/11 hijackers still in US, virtually immune from deportation  —  Free to do as he pleases, living out his days in the suburbs of northern New Jersey, a Syrian national who is a known associate of the 9/11 hijackers never has to worry about deportation by the U.S. government …

The New Republic Fires Timothy Noah  —  On Thursday, New Republic columnist Timothy Noah received an email from editor Frank Foer asking him to meet at 2:30 pm on Friday.  During the meeting, Foer told Noah that he was out of a job.  —  When Noah got to the New Republic's lobby …

Obama offers Jordan $200 million more to help Syrian refugees  —  President Obama said Friday he would work with Congress to provide Jordan an additional $200 million in aid this year, as the country struggles to cope with nearly half a million refugees who have fled the Civil War in neighboring Syria.