Dean Obeidallah, Salon

Political satirist Andy Borowitz has published a new book, "Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber," which may surprise some readers. Unlike his New Yorker column, The Borowitz Report, this book is not cast in the vein of genial or gentle humor. It's a stinging indictment of how the Republican Party has, by design, devolved from at least somewhat reasonable or coherent discussions of politics and policy to full-on celebration of idiocy.

This article first appeared in Salon.

I spoke to Borowitz for a recent episode of "Salon Talks" about his deeply researched book on the GOP's long arc into paralyzing dumbness. He shared his insight on the GOP's "three stages of ignorance," which come with laugh-out-loud moments when he quotes actual words spoken by leading Republicans to make his point. Consider this legendary utterance from former Vice President Dan Quayle: "I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future. … The future will be better tomorrow." ...

Jordan Klepper, correspondent on "The Daily Show," has made a name for himself going to Trump rallies in recent years and cleverly getting Trump supporters to share their unintentionally comedic — and even alarming views. Now Klepper is traveling to the ghost of autocracy's future as he heads to Hungary in his new TV special for Comedy Central's "The Daily Show." In "Jordan Klepper Fingers the Globe: Hungary for Democracy," premiering Thursday, April 21 at 11:30 ET/PT on Comedy Central, he explores the alarming connection between the increasingly autocratic government there and our own budding autocratic movement known as the GOP. In fact, America's Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) is holding a conference in Hungary this May.

As we discussed on our "Salon Talks" episode, which you can watch below, Klepper first became aware of this unholy love affair between America's right and Hungary's autocrats when he covered the most recent CPAC convention in Orlando for "The Daily Show." That event surprisingly featured Hungarian politicians who served up all the typical GOP red meat including saying, "Let's Go Brandon," which is code for "F**k Joe Biden." As Klepper explained, "It turns out conservatives look to Hungary as a conservative wonderland."

Why? Simply, Hungary's right wing prime minister Viktor Orban is passionately anti-immigrant, has demonized Muslims, passed vile anti-LGBTQ laws, controls the media, rigged elections, banned topics in school he doesn't approve of and has made George Soros his number one enemy. Sound familiar? ...

Elie Mystal, attorney and author of the New York Times bestseller "Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution," wanted actor Samuel L. Jackson to record the audio version of his book. Mystal's title, after all, is drawn from one of Jackson's famous lines in "Pulp Fiction." But if you've seen Mystal on cable news, you know he doesn't need Jackson to provide passion and emphatic delivery. Mystal gives you all that and more, as you will see first-hand in our recent "Salon Talks" conversation.

Mystal takes, shall we say, the controversial position that the U.S. Constitution is not only "not good," but that it's "actually trash." He notes that our founding document was drafted by men who owned slaves and enshrined that evil institution with the infamous Fugitive Slave Clause and the "three-fifths compromise." But Mystal's bigger point is that our Constitution is given too much deference: "We act like this thing was kind of etched in stone by the finger of God, when actually it was hotly contested and debated, scrawled out over a couple of weeks in the summer in Philadelphia in 1787, with a bunch of rich, white politicians making deals with each other."

Mystal also lays bare the myth that the motivation behind the Second Amendment was about self-defense or a check on the government. As he notes, George Mason — then the governor of Virginia and one of the drafters of the Constitution — flat-out said that the Second Amendment was meant to guarantee that Southern states could form a "well-regulated militia" to "fight slave revolts." Mason and other Southerners feared that the federal government wouldn't help them put down slave uprisings, and they needed to have guns close at hand. ...

"The pursuit of justice creates injustice," is the paradoxical line that opens CNN legal expert Laura Coates' bestselling new book, "Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor's Fight for Fairness." I spoke to Coates for "Salon Talks" about her fight for fairness as a federal prosecutor, how she has handled criticism as a prosecutor and her take on the prospective Black female Supreme Court justice President Biden has promised to nominate.

"I always found it to be very shocking that people have the impression that you could either be an advocate and proponent for civil rights or a prosecutor," Coates said. "You have to be both and you have to wield the discretion that you have with an eye towards what is fair." She added that the true goal of a prosecutor should not be how many convictions you rack up, but how strongly you fight for fairness, because that, as she explained, "is the predicate for any real justice system." But in that pursuit of fairness, injustice can emerge.

Her work as a federal prosecutor also included a stint in the voting rights section of the Department of Justice, where she fought against efforts to disenfranchise voters of color. At that time, however the Voting Rights Act was in full force, and had not yet been gutted by the Supreme Court in the infamous Shelby County v. Holder decision of 2013. Coates made it clear that many of the voter suppression laws passed by Republican-dominated state legislatures since January 2021 would not have been permitted if the Voting Rights Act's pre-clearance provision was still in effect — the very section of the law invalidated by the Shelby County decision. As Coates noted, the GOP's attack on voting rights has made it feel like America has gone backward in time to the days before 1964....

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, opens his bestselling new book, "Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy" by sharing "two impossible traumas" he suffered in the same week: "the shattering death by suicide" of his 25-year-old son, and the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. As Raskin discussed during our recent "Salon Talks" conversation, these two losses obviously are not equivalent — but in linking them on some level, Raskin is also sharing his deep love for America.

I have interviewed Raskin many times for my SiriusXM radio show, and he has always been a thoughtful, measured person when it comes to talking politics of the day. The fact that he's a former constitutional law professor likely contributes to that professorial nature. That's also why we should all take heed of his words when he states point blank that today's Republican Party has launched a "fascist attack against the constitutional order." In his book, Raskin writes that the GOP is now "the party of Trump, authoritarianism, corruption, and insurrection."

That has become even more obvious in recent weeks as Donald Trump suggested he would pardon the Capitol attackers if returned to office, and the Republican National Committee approved a resolution describing the Jan. 6 attack as "legitimate political discourse." Raskin, who is a member of the House select committee investigating the events Jan. 6, shared his belief that the panel's upcoming public hearings could be the most important in American history, saying they will "certainly up there with the Watergate hearings." You can watch my "Salon Talks" with Rep. Raskin here, or read our conversation below to hear Raskin discuss the "maddening and frustrating" fact that Trump has yet to be brought to justice....