The Jeremy Lin story only gets more amazing this week, as the most unlikely sports hero of the past decade. Also this week, the tragedy of Whitney Houston. Michigan becomes the next battleground in the GOP primary. We look back at this week's stories with our panel. Ron Christie is a Takeaway contributor and Republican political strategist. Jeff Yang writes the Tao Jones column for The Wall Street Journal and blogs for our co-producer WNYC's It's a Free Country. Farai Chideya is a journalist and blogger at Farai.com.

Jeff Yang, contributor to It's A Free Country, the WSJ Speakeasy blog, and former "Asian Pop" columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, and Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, Takeaway sports correspondent, comment on the meteoric rise to fame of Chinese-American Knicks player Jeremy Lin, and what it says about sports, race and culture.

It's Friday, the time we spend time with our most valuable minds here on The Takeaway to look at the week's stories. Is the Conservative Political Action Conference a right-wing Star Trek convention? How will the gay marriage issue play out? And why has contraception become a political issue? Our panel tackles these stories and more.

This week the Susan G. Komen Foundation cut funding for Planned Parenthood, Mitt Romney made headlines when he said he wasn't "concerned about the very poor," and Florida's GOP Primary went to Mitt Romney, with Newt Gingrich clenching a distant second.

Like a mindless herd, we journalists have anointed Iowa the nation’s presidential kingmaker, and established a narrative that assigns the candidate winning the state “momentum” and “electability”…despite the fact that the caucuses aren’t even a binding vote.

Every Friday, The Takeaway convenes a panel to look back at the week's big stories. Among the headlines, after Mitt Romney squeezed out Rick Santorum by just eight votes in the Iowa caucuses, his hometown newspaper, The Boston Globe, endorsed rival Jon Huntsman. Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann dropped out of the race after placing last in Tuesday's caucuses. President Obama and Congressional Republicans are doing battle again, this time over his recess appointment of Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

This week brought the end of the Iraq War and a Russia in turmoil after recent disputed elections. Also, the final GOP debate before the Iowa caucus was last night on Fox News. Joining The Takeaway for a look at this week's big stories are Jeff Yang, writer of the Tao Jones column for The Wall Street Journal and bloger for WNYC's It's a Free Country, and Farai Chideya, journalist and blogger at Farai.com.

On Monday, Forbes columnist Gene Marks strayed from his usual beat — business technology — to write a column, "If I Were a Poor Black Kid,"  This is a response to that column, told from the perspective of one of Marks's "poor black kids." Note: Jeff Yang, the author of this response, is not in fact a poor black kid.

This week, the euro zone nations agreed to a pact to deal with the ongoing debt crisis, but the U.K. will not be taking part. Newt Gingrich's comments about child labor continued to dominate the headlines. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of instigating protests over alleged voter fraud there. And Donald Trump once again became the focus of the Republican primary field as candidates slowly dropped out of a Newmax-sponsored debate he was to moderate.

This week, we've seen Newt Gingrich continue to climb in the Republican polls as Herman Cain has continued to falter. Also out of Washington, Rep. Barney Frank announced his intention to not seek re-election after his fiery 32-year career. And, a new study rejuvenates the perennial debate about legalizing marijuana.

Slammed as the Stupid Party, the GOP turns to Newt Gingrich as its new egghead savior.

On Thanksgiving week, the big stories were the consumer's holiday shopping start-up — Black Friday, of course. The turkey was barely cold this year before family members were out the door to hit the box stores for the biggest deals of the season. In Washington, the debt committee was the most expected failure all year. And pepper spray went from a crime deterrent to an Internet meme.

Yesterday's spirited defense of brutal police actions toward UC-Davis protesters by Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly is threatening to launch a fresh meme, already spilling out of a thread on Gawker into the free-range web.

Continued gaffes from the Cain campaign, diminishing returns for the GOP from their presidential candidates, Occupy Wall Street moves out of the park, and pizza is now technically a vegetable — for better or worse — these are stories that dominated the headlines for the last week. The Takeaway has assembled a panel of analysts to rundown, dissect, and wrap-up all the major stories of the week.

Perry is working on his statesmanlike gestures. And he seems to have reduced the dosage on his nerve tonic.

Rick Perry's slow motion political gaffe, the continuing debt crisis in Europe, and the scandal that rocked Penn State University were — for better or worse — the stories that dominated the headlines for the last week. The Takeaway has assembled a panel of analysts to rundown, dissect, and wrap-up all the major stories of the week.

Herman Cain's sexual harassment woes. Greece's unstable government buckling under pressure from its debt crisis. The renewed focus on the striking disparity between rich and poor in America. And, well, Kim Kardashian's divorce. These were, for better or worse, the stories that dominated the headlines for the last week. The Takeaway has assembled a panel of analysts to rundown, dissect, and wrap-up all the major stories of the week.

Legal experts think PETA's suit seeking to define animal captivity as slavery is unlikely to succeed. But what if it does?

Last week, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals once again made headlines — it's what they do — by filing suit in federal court on ...

Contributor to It's A Free Country and one of the editors of Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology, Jeff Yang, talks about his most recent column on how comic books and politics mix, and who he thinks various superheroes would endorse in the 2012 election.

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