By Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica

Hundreds of teen-agers are raped or sexually assaulted during their stays in the country's juvenile detention facilities, and many of them are victimized repeatedly, according to a U.S. Department of Justice survey.

The teens are most often assaulted by staff members working at the facilities, and fully 20 percent of those victimized by the men and women charged with protecting and counseling them said they had been violated on more than 10 occasions.

"Today's report illustrates the fundamental failure of many juvenile detention facilities to keep their youth safe," said Louisa Stannow, executive director of Just Detention International, a California-based health and human rights organization.

The Justice Department survey — covering both secure juvenile detention facilities and group homes, the less restrictive settings into which troubled youngsters are often ordered — involved more than 8,500 boys and girls. In all, 1,720 of those surveyed reported being sexually assaulted.

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The Young Turks: Cenk, Ben Mankiewicz and Brett Erlich discuss troubling reports that the Department of Justice tapped Fox News reporter James Rosen’s phone line – and his parents’. Cenk says the journalist wiretapping is the only actual scandal going on right now (as opposed to the IRS audits and Benghazi). But because Fox News flips out over everything, it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff on the rare occasion that they’re right about something.

“Part of the problem is that Fox News cries wolf so much that once they have a legitimate argument… you’ve lost a little credibility,” Cenk says.

I'm not sure when, or if, Fox News ever had a legitimate argument -- or credibility -- but they do cry wolf rather often.

On Tuesday morning, homeowners facing foreclosure and housing rights activists from across the country -- including the Home Defender's League and Occupy Our Homes (an off-shoot of Occupy Wall Street) -- rallied outside the U.S. Department of Justice to demand Attorney General Holder hold the Wall Street Banks that ravaged America’s economy accountable. Dozens of struggling homeowners are prepared to risk arrest in non-violent civil disobedience or set up an ongoing occupation outside the Department of Justice until demands for Wall Street accountability and relief for their communities are addressed.

The action at the DOJ began on Monday, and although they were supported by over 500 allies, the DOJ decided they would rather jail these everyday Americans than step up to help resolve the ongoing foreclosure crisis. Some of those arrested were even tasered -- 17 arrests in all, with two being tasered by police.

WaPo:

According to D.C. police, 17 people were arrested. Ann C. Wilcox, an attorney who represents protesters, said several were tased during the scuffle. A D.C. police spokeswoman said D.C. police were not involved in the tasing. Federal law enforcement officials on the scene declined comment.

Police also closed Constitution Avenue for much of the afternoon, leading to traffic backups downtown.

As of 4:45 pm, about 50 protesters were standing in the street or sitting on the sidewalk, and police were preparing for more arrests. Officers equipped with crowd dispersal agents guarded the entrance to the Justice Department. A police helicopter circled overhead.

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Hold Wall Street Accountable! Occupy Our Homes Week of Action, May 18-25

Via OccupyOurHomes.org and OccupyWallSt.org:

Over the last few years, homeowners and residents around the country have taken a stand against the banks and fought foreclosures and evictions. The growing network of Occupy Our Homes supporters have signed petitions, made phone calls, and showed up to events to help families stay in their homes. Dozens of homeowners around the country have won their fights, but the crisis is far from over.

Communities have been destroyed as millions of families have already lost their homes to foreclosure, while millions more are underwater on their mortgages. The big banks are bigger and more powerful than ever. To date, no high level Wall Street executives have been prosecuted for their crimes, such as mortgage fraud and predatory lending. US attorney general, Eric Holder even admitted recently that in the administration's eyes, the banks are not only ‘too big to fail,’ they're now ‘too big to jail.’

As a new housing bubble fueled by Wall Street speculation is forming, it's clear that the financial industry didn't learn their lesson from the last mess. It's more important than ever for us to take action to demand meaningful relief for homeowners and prosecutions for the criminals at the top. Only through the power of thousands of organized homeowners taking action in the streets can we make the Attorney General and the President listen. Occupy Our Homes, the Home Defenders League, and others are joining fed-up homeowners who are ready to demand action-- join us the week of May 20th.

Over the next two months, Home Defenders from across the country will have an opportunity to tell their stories and fight back. Some will travel to Washington, DC the week of May 20th to make their voice heard directly at the Department of Justice. Join the fight! Sign up now to fight in your city. Scholarships will be available to attend the Department of Justice Action in Washington DC.

Click here to sign up

From Ring of Fire: Papantonio: Are Conservatives Ready To Break Up The Banks?:

For years, Progressives have been fighting to break up the big banks that crashed our economy. And now, they've gotten an unlikely ally in that fight -- The Tea Party. Apparently there are some members in the GOP who actually believe that the too big to fail banks need to be broken apart -- but not for the same reason progressives believe. Mike Papantonio discusses the evolving attitudes of the Tea Party with investigative journalist David Dayen.

Here's more from DDay's column at The American Prospect: Banks Are Too Big to Fail Say ... Conservatives?:

Intellectuals on the right are coming around to the idea that our biggest financial institutions could use a little regulation.

Members of the Federal Reserve don’t usually make the rounds at partisan gatherings. But amid the tri-cornered hats and “#StandWithRand” buttons of last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)—the largest annual gathering of conservatives in the country—was Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank. In a Saturday morning speech, Fisher quoted Revolutionary War hero Patrick Henry, who once said that while “Different men often see the same subject in different lights,” such quibbling had to be set aside in a time of “awful moment to this country.”

Fisher described the current time as an era of economic injustice in which the nation’s largest banks threaten our financial stability and act with immunity. He said that the Dodd-Frank financial reform law did not go nearly far enough to fix the problem, and that mega-banks still profited from being “Too Big to Fail.” His solutions included a proposal to limit the total assets held by the biggest financial institutions, keeping them at a size that would make them “small enough to save.” And he called on citizens of all political stripes to join him in this cause. “The American people will be grateful to whoever liberates them from a recurrence of taxpayer bailouts,” Fisher concluded. It was an indication of just how bipartisan the support for breaking up the big banks has become.

It may be surprising that conservatives—whose party just ran a private-equity tycoon for president—would be clamoring for Wall Street banks to be cut down to size. But over the last few years, conservative intellectuals—from economists and central bankers to think-tankers and high-profile pundits—have come to the conclusion that the largest institutions remain Too Big to Fail and that, in ways big and small, receive unfair financial advantages over their smaller rivals. Read on...

Eliot Spitzer, former New York governor, former New York attorney general and former Current TV host, returned to “Viewpoint” on Thursday for a wide-ranging interview with John Fugelsang. Spitzer shares his thoughts on NRA leader Wayne LaPierre’s recent op-ed, "Wayne LaPierre is a complete lunatic." Spitzer also weighs in on Nevada Senator Harry Reid’s shortcomings on filibuster reform, the looming sequestration, and the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Standard & Poor’s.

“Until we see Republican legislators responding to the 85 percent who agree with what we think is the more common sense view, then we’ve got to say, ‘Look, Wayne LaPierre is still holding the political cards,’ crazy as it may be,” Spitzer says. “If this guy six months from now has stopped anything other than a weak universal background check — if they haven’t limited the number of bullets in a magazine, if there isn’t an assault weapons ban — then he will have won. And that is a very sad reality we’ve got to face.”

Michael Isikoff, national investigative correspondent for NBC News, talks with Rachel Maddow about a newly obtained, confidential Department of Justice white paper that hints at the details of a secret White House memo that explains the legal justifications for targeted drone strikes that kill Americans without trial in the name of national security.

NBC News:

A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force” -- even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.

The 16-page memo, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, provides new details about the legal reasoning behind one of the Obama administration’s most secretive and controversial polices: its dramatically increased use of drone strikes against al-Qaida suspects, including those aimed at American citizens, such as the September 2011 strike in Yemen that killed alleged al-Qaida operatives Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. Both were U.S. citizens who had never been indicted by the U.S. government nor charged with any crimes.

The secrecy surrounding such strikes is fast emerging as a central issue in this week’s hearing of White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, a key architect of the drone campaign, to be CIA director. Brennan was the first administration official to publicly acknowledge drone strikes in a speech last year, calling them “consistent with the inherent right of self-defense.” In a separate talk at the Northwestern University Law School in March, Attorney General Eric Holder specifically endorsed the constitutionality of targeted killings of Americans, saying they could be justified if government officials determine the target poses “an imminent threat of violent attack.”

But the confidential Justice Department “white paper” introduces a more expansive definition of self-defense or imminent attack than described by Brennan or Holder in their public speeches. It refers, for example, to what it calls a “broader concept of imminence” than actual intelligence about any ongoing plot against the U.S. homeland.

Isikoff's report reveals that the Obama administration believes that high-level administration officials -- not just the president -- may order the killing of “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or an associated force even without any evidence that they are actively plotting against the U.S.

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Better late than never? The Justice Department and state prosecutors are planning to file civil charges against Standard & Poor’s for its rating of risky mortgage bonds before the financial crisis, sources tell the Wall Street Journal. If true, the move will be the first federal action against a credit-rating firm in connection with the 2008 meltdown, though the high grades the firms gave to subprime mortgage bonds precipitated the crisis. The charges come after settlement talks between S&P and the Justice Department broke down and reportedly focus on the models S&P used to rate mortgage bonds.

Via:

The lawsuit against the McGraw-Hill Cos unit focuses on its ratings in 2007 of various U.S. collateralized debt obligations (CDO), S&P said.

It would be the first federal enforcement action against a credit rating agency over alleged illegal behavior tied to the financial crisis.

"A DOJ lawsuit would be entirely without factual or legal merit," S&P said in a statement. "The DOJ would be wrong in contending that S&P ratings were motivated by commercial considerations and not issued in good faith."

Once again, this is only a civil suit. No criminal charges from the DOJ for any corporation involved in the mortgage crisis, those seem to be reserved only for those of more modest means who enjoy smoking some herb now and again -- or heaven forfend, growing a plant.

Well, you've watched Frontline's investigative report "The Untouchables," here or at PBS's website, or on your local PBS station.

The report cast a sharp glare on the lack of even a single arrest or prosecution of any senior Wall Street banker for the systemic fraud that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis: a crisis from which millions of people around the world are still suffering. What this program particularly demonstrated was that Eric Holder's justice department, in particular the Chief of its Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer, never even tried to hold the high-level criminals accountable. It revealed Breuer to be an arrogant twit who insisted the DOJ couldn’t prosecute despite a plethora of evidence of crimes presented in the show.

From Frontline's interview with Breuer:

NARRATOR: FRONTLINE spoke to two former high-level Justice Department prosecutors who served in the Criminal Division under Lanny Breuer. In their opinion, Breuer was overly fearful of losing.

MARTIN SMITH: We spoke to a couple of sources from within the Criminal Division, and they reported that when it came to Wall Street, there were no investigations going on. There were no subpoenas, no document reviews, no wiretaps.

LANNY BREUER: Well, I don’t know who you spoke with because we have looked hard at the very types of matters that you’re talking about.

MARTIN SMITH: These sources said that at the weekly indictment approval meetings that there was no case ever mentioned that was even close to indicting Wall Street for financial crimes.

LANNY BREUER: Well, Martin, if you look at what we and the U.S. attorney community did, I think you have to take a step back. Over the last couple of years, we have convicted Raj Rajaratnam. Now, you’ll say that’s an insider trading case, but it’s clearly going after Wall Street. We—

MARTIN SMITH: But it has nothing to do with the financial crisis, the meltdown, the packaging of bad mortgages that led to the collapse, that led to the recession.

LANNY BREUER: Well, first of all, I think that the financial crisis, Martin, is multi-faceted. And what we’ve had is a multi-pronged, multi-faceted response. And it’s simply a fiction to say that where crimes were committed, we didn’t pursue the cases. And that’s why, where crimes were committed, you have more people in jail today for securities fraud, bank fraud and the like than ever before.

MARTIN SMITH: But no Wall Street executives.

LANNY BREUER: No Wall Street executives.

"More people in jail today for securities fraud, bank fraud and the like than ever before," not true, Mr. Breurer.

In the wake of the savings and loan debacle in the 1980s, special government task forces referred 1,100 cases to prosecutors, resulting in more than 800 bank officials going to jail. Among the best-known: Charles H. Keating Jr., of Lincoln Savings and Loan in Arizona, and David Paul, of Centrust Bank in Florida.

Then, the DOJ threatened Frontline that they would take their cookies and go home, never to cooperate with them again, see the tweets below:

Via Twitter.

Next, this ridiculous piece appeared in the Washington Post announcing Breuer’s imminent departure that paints him as some sort of persecuted white knight:

"A former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Breuer came to the Justice Department well versed in white-collar crime. He has been a driving force behind the prosecution of banks involved in rigging the global interest rate known as Libor. His efforts helped produce a $1.5 billion settlement with UBS and led to criminal indictments against two of the bank’s former traders in December."

In all, not a bad day's work for Martin Smith. But no doubt Breuer's replacement will be another balding guy in a suit just like him.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a civil complaint against JPMorgan Chase for fraud in the selling of mortgage-backed securities. Schneiderman is the co-chairman of a presidential task force formed in January to investigate possible civil and criminal misconduct in the formation and sale of mortgage-backed securities. The allegation is over securities issued by the investment bank Bear Stearns in 2006 and 2007. JPMorgan acquired Bear Stearns in March 2008.

NYT:

The federal mortgage task force that was formed in January by the Justice Department filed its first complaint against a big bank on Monday, citing a broad pattern of misconduct in the packaging and sale of mortgage securities during the housing boom.
...

The complaint contends that Bear Stearns and its lending unit EMC Mortgage defrauded investors who purchased mortgage securities packaged by the companies from 2005 through 2007. The firms made material misrepresentations about the quality of the loans in the securities, the lawsuit said, and ignored evidence of broad defects among the loans that they pooled and sold to investors.

Moreover, when Bear Stearns identified problematic loans that it had agreed to purchase from a lender, it was required to make the originator buy them back. But Bear Stearns demanded cash payments from the lenders and kept the money, rather than passing it on to investors, the suit contends.

Always, it's about the money. No criminal charges, again, because the feds wouldn't receive a cash settlement. Yet over 7,000 Occupy Wall Street protesters have been beaten, pepper-sprayed, arrested, and jailed...bankers? Zero. No justice here.

However, this was done in Schneiderman's capacity as the New York Attorney General, not the task force. A lack of confidence in the task force, perhaps?