One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy from the CIA, FBI and the Mafia

This is the story of Sen. Frank Church, who exposed the dirty laundry of the CIA and the FBI nearly 50 years ago, and inspired congressional oversight of intelligence agencies. The Last Honest Man also doubles as a guide to high-stakes politics.  In this book, James Risen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, examines Senator Frank Church, the man at the center of numerous investigations into abuses of power within the American government.

We live in a world today where it is understood that The United States has a powerful array of intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency and others. And while much of what they do is classified, it's also understood that they're ultimately accountable to Congress and the American people for what they spend and what they do. But this was not always the case in Senator Church’s time and some politicians contend it is not the case now.

After helping conduct the Watergate inquiries, he formed a Senate committee that exposed the nefarious activities of the intelligence community, including the CIA’s alliance with the Mafia in an effort to assassinate Fidel Castro.

For 16 months, Church and his committee scrutinized the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and their many abuses. Church also examined presidents’ use of emergency powers to advance their agendas.

As a result of the discoveries of his committee, Church arrived at a difficult question: was the disgraced Richard Nixon really that different from his predecessors in the White House? We can ask: Was Trump really that different from his predecessors in the White House (with regard to intelligence agencies)?

In the author's view assassinations and coups carry a bipartisan legacy. It wasn't just Eisenhower and Nixon, Iran and Chile. It was also Kennedy, Cuba and Vietnam. Then we had Iran, Afghanistan, et al.

Iran and its aftermath still reverberate. But for that debacle, would Trumpism have attained the purchase it still possesses? Would our national divide be as deep - or intractable? We will bring the recent past to bear on the present in our discussions about U.S. intelligence agencies in this SDG.

Hollywood in the 1940’s

“In 1939, …, the leading moviemakers of Hollywood could … regard themselves as conquering heroes. The assorted film studios, …, had by now become the nation’s eleventh-largest industry. They created some four hundred new films every year, attracted more than fifty million Americans to the theater every week, and grossed nearly $700 million annually. Just a decade later, Hollywood was in shambles, its biggest studios losing money, its celebrities embroiled in charges of Communist influence, its audiences turning to television.” Our core book, CITY OF NETS/A PORTRAIT OF HOLLYWOOD IN THE 1940’S (1986), looks at whether it was always “Golden” in Hollywood’s Golden Era and behind the Silver Screen in an effort to answer the question: What happened to cause this change of fortune? Its author, Otto Friedrich, was not a “Hollywood Insider.” He was the Managing Editor of the Saturday Evening Post, a senior editor at Time Magazine and a well regarded national journalist and cultural historian who took a distanced view of Hollywood. Together we will explore the era, Hollywood’s movers and shakers, Hays Office Code censorship, famed directors, movie stars, labor troubles, publicity scandals, antitrust problems, “black list” problems. And, oh yes, back stories to some beloved movies - such as GONE WITH THE WIND, CITIZEN KANE, THE MALTESE FALCON, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, ALL ABOUT EVE, CASABLANCA, SUNSET BOULEVARD and others.  

Elon Musk

Elon Musk is the world's richest man and one of the most powerful.  He led the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, artificial intelligence, and took over Twitter (now X).   He has Aspergers, had an abusive father, and fathered ten children with four women.  For two years, journalist, professor and bestselling biographer Walter Isaacson followed the billionaire entrepreneur through his SpaceX and Tesla factories and board meetings, and spent hours interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers and adversaries. Isaacson concluded, “He’s the most interesting person on the planet right now doing the most interesting things and driving people crazy in the process.”  Find out how he thinks, how he became who he is, and what he is likely to do in the future. 

The Coming Wave; an exploration of artificial intelligence

The core book, “The Coming Wave“ by Mustafa Sulleyman was published in September, 2023. It addresses a wave of change that is driven by AI and genetic engineering. Our SDG will explore the past, present, and future of artificial intelligence, and to a lesser extent  biogenetics. We will review the history of AI from its early origins, to its current state, and also the potentials for AI in the future. We will address the ethical and social implications of AI and the opportunities and risks associated with it. The author discusses why this wave of technology change will occur more rapidly than past waves, such as electricity and automobiles. He emphasizes that we may have to find a way to “contain“ AI to avoid the worst risks, and he discusses how that might be done. 

Mustafa Sulleyman is a serial entrepreneur and AI pioneer. He is best known for co-founding Deep Mind (now part of Google) and Inflection AI.  “The Coming Wave“ has already received widespread praise and review by among others: Bill Gates;  Yuval Harari;  Eric Schmidt, a former CEO of Google;  Elon Musk;  Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple;  and Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. 

Our SDG will also feature hands-on exploration of many of the new AI applications, including: chatbots, such as Chat GTP, Bing Chat, Google’s Bard, Anthropic‘s Claude 2, and Inflection’s PI;  image generators, such as DALLE from Open AI, and Midjourney;  digital assistants like Siri and Alexa;  facial recognition technology;  and translation apps. Members will choose not only a chapter from the core book to lead a discussion on, but also will choose an AI application to report on and where possible, will have the group try out before discussing at our session.

Elections 2024

Every four years our nation goes through a political paroxysm of (pick one or all): furious activity, anxiety, fear, or loathing. The Presidential election -- this year may be the worst ever. The nation has gone through a grueling time since the 2020 election. Now, not only must we choose our president & vice-president, 1/3 of all Senators, all members of the House of Representatives, countless governors and state legislators – we are faced with two very different philosophies of governance. 

This SDG proposes to study Election 2024 in each of the three terms in 2024. While we will focus on the Presidential race, we’ll also discuss important local and national trends & issues as they emerge.

How the South Won the Civil War - The Fight for the Soul of America

The Nation's founders - the same men who came up with the radical idea of constructing a nation on the principle of equality - owned slaves, thought Indians were savages, and considered women inferior.  America was founded with contradicting ideals, with the ideas of liberty, equality, and opportunity on one hand, and slavery and hierarchy on the other.  This is the American paradox, the competing claims of equality and white male domination that were woven into the nation’s fabric from the beginning.  United States victory in the American Civil War should have settled that tension forever, but at the same time that the Civil War was fought, Americans also started moving into the West. In the West, Americans found, and expanded upon, deep racial hierarchies. Those traditions—a rejection of democracy, an embrace of entrenched wealth, the marginalization of women and people of color—have found a home in modern conservative politics.

We will supplement our core book,  How the South Won the Civil War with writings from Jubal Early, a southern war general and key figure in the creation of the Lost Cause myth; with the highly influential Conscience of a Conservative, ghost-written by L. Brent Bozell; with an oft-cited 2016 essay from a prominent conservative intellectual arguing the critical importance of a Trump win over Hillary Clinton; and finally with selected readings from recent Richardson publications.  

Our core book author Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian and professor of history at Boston College.  She publishes Letters from an American, a nightly online newsletter that chronicles current events in the larger context of American history, with over one million subscribers.

The Amazing Films of The Coen Brothers

The Amazing Films of the Cohen Brothers EDITED VERSION.

Yes, we have no popcorn,*** but fun is us in our SDG as we discuss the Coen Brothers’ films of imaginative stories, twists and unpredictable noir U-turns aplenty provided by these highly acclaimed, multi-talented filmmakers. Collaborating on both scripting and direction, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have produced some of the most distinctive films in contemporary American cinema, including Fargo, Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski and True Grit. Join us as we journey with the Coens across a mythical American landscape that is the realm of tales tall and strange, yet full of truths about the human condition. 

Meet or get reacquainted with some unforgettable characters like Fargo’s Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson, The Big Lebowski’s Jeff Bridges as The Dude, as well as John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Julienne Moore and William H. Macy; Raising Arizona’s Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter; Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin featured in True Grit, and Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin illuminating No Country for Old Men.Many more familiar characters and those as yet unknown.

Beginning with the Coens’ initial 1984 neo-noir, Blood Simple, we will glide through Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, True Grit, Inside Llewyn Davis andHail, Caesar! Say “YES” to our friendly Wednesday 10am-12pm PT Zoom for stimulating movie discussion, where our core text is the excellent The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together by Adam Nayman, and where your contributions- large or small, frequent or rare- will be welcomed, respected and appreciated. B.Y.O.P.*** 

American Jewish story in Cinema

In an industry replete with Jewish executives and creators, a number of important movies reflected on the American Jewish experience.  We will view all of these films and discuss the era in which they were made, what issues were dealt with, and the changes in attitudes they reflect. Some of the films do not even refer to their characters as Jews, yet they are proto-typically Jewish.

Certainly, they reflect a self-consciousness of their creators and of the studios which funded their production. One does not need a Jewish background to analyze and discuss these provocative films.  Just a willingness to view, to research, and to discuss not only the quality of each film, but its intrinsic observations of its time and reflections on our own.our own. ( Please Note: There are no  films about European life or the Holocaust.)

The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses It to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic

The Supreme Court has always had the authority to issue emergency rulings in exceptional circumstances. Since 2017 however, the Court has dramatically expanded its use of the behind-the-scenes “shadow docket,” regularly making decisions that affect millions of Americans without public hearings and without explanation, with cryptic late-night rulings that leave lawyers—and citizens—struggling to understand them.

The Court’s conservative majority has used the shadow docket to approve restrictive voting laws and bans on abortion, and to curtail immigration and COVID vaccine mandates. Stephen Vladek, the author of our core book and a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law, makes the case that we, the public, should be concerned about what the increasing use of the shadow docket portends for the rule of law.