By Tom Ashbrook:

The status quo certainly got stirred, if not shaken this week.

First woman Speaker of the House was voted in: Nancy Pelosi. The first black man was memorialized on the National Mall: Martin Luther King. Milton Friedman is dead. Jack Abramoff is in jail. Clear Channel’s media empire is to be sold for $18 billion. There were real, tough hearings on Iraq. Sudan says yes — though we’ll wait and see — to UN peacekeepers in Darfur.

And American baseball pays $51 million just to talk to Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka. That’s new. But there’s old, too. Iraq remains unsolved and scarier than ever. Trent Lott is back from exile. Tornadoes are on a tear.

This hour On Point: we unpack the news of the week, with keen-eyed reporters, and you.

Guests:

Trudy Rubin, foreign affairs correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer

Charles Babington, congressional correspondent for The Washington Post

Jack Beatty, On Point News Analyst, senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly