On Monday, May 20th, hundreds of homeowners facing foreclosure and housing rights activists from across the country will rally outside of the United States 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.

Demonstrators today are using their bodies to send a message to Eric Holder that it is time to stop shielding the big Wall Street banks from prosecution. Hundreds of homeowners who have been playing by the rules while the big banks have cheated them are risking arrest at the Department of Justice to make an unmistakable statement: it is about time for the government to side with poor and middle class folks who the bankers have screwed rather than those banks who have been cheating them.

The Campaign for a Fair Settlement and the Alliance for a Just Society put together devastating reports in April and May, the first of which points out that the administration has yet to prosecute a single major bank or top level executive for the widespread fraud leading to the system's collapse, while the most recent report discusses how much better the economy would be if the administration was forcing the big banks to actually help homeowners who had been hurt by the banks. From the report:

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Harry Reid seems to be threatening to almost, possibly, maybe think about invoking the nuclear option on the filibuster again, but he does that all the time. So he's probably just trying to pressure Republicans to quit stalling on some key nominations.

Greg Sargent:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is increasingly focused on the month of July as the time to exercise the so-called “nuclear option” and revisit filibuster reform, and he has privately told top advisers that he’s all but certain to take action if the Senate GOP blocks three upcoming key nominations, a senior Senate Democratic aide familiar with his thinking tells me.

Reid has privately consulted with President Obama on the need to revisit filibuster reform, and the President has told the Majority Leader that he will support the exercising of the nuclear option if Reid opts for it, the aide says, adding that senior Democrats expect the President to publicly push for it as well. “If Senator Reid decides to do something on nominations, the president has said he’ll be there to support him,” the aide says.

Reid is eyeing a change to the rules that would do away with the 60-vote threshold on all judicial and executive branch nominations, the aide says, on the theory that this is a good way to immediately break an important logjam in Washington — without changing the rules when it comes to legislation.

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The Non Sequitur: Jonah Goldberg would have noticed this hypocrisy, if he weren’t such a hypocrite.

We Are Respectable Negroes: A potpourri of anti-Obama racism.

Unqualified Offerings: Come on, Mr. HR man.

I Spy with My Little Eye: Writing with scissors.

FAIR: More on Jon Karl.

Guest post by Batocchio. Email tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.

SCTV's "What's My Shoe Size?"

PS. Our thoughts are with those affected by the tornadoes this week. Our hearts go out to you.

It's really thrilling to see the kinds of things made by these young kids in these science competitions. And this young lady came up with something with immediate practical applications:

An 18-year-old science student has made an astonishing breakthrough that will enable mobile phones and other batteries to be charged within seconds rather than the hours it takes today’s devices to power back up.

Saratoga, Calif. resident Eesha Khare made the breakthrough by creating a small supercapacitor that can fit inside a cell phone battery and enable ultra-fast electricity transfer and storage, delivering a full charge in 20-30 seconds instead of several hours.

The nano-tech device Khare created can supposedly withstand up to 100,000 charges, a 100-fold increase over current technology, and it’s flexible enough to be used in clothing or displays on any non-flat surface.

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Leaving aside the fact that this is yet another installment of It's 1939 And The Next Hitler Is About To Invade Poland silliness, Grassley's historical revisionism is remarkable.

In fact, the United States in 1939 had a foreign policy under FDR, one that was increasingly at odds with Chuck Grassley's Republican Party. After Hitler invaded Poland, Roosevelt urged Congress to repeal the Neutrality Act embargo provisions. They finally got around to it a couple months later, over the objections of isolationist Republicans.

Shortly after, isolationist Republicans also tried to block FDR's Lend Lease Act, which supplied our future allies in the war. Most Republicans nationally were against Lend Lease.

The American position was to help the British but not enter the war. In early February 1941 a Gallup poll revealed that 54 percent of Americans were unqualifiedly in favor of Lend-Lease. A further 15 percent were in favor with qualifications such as: "If it doesn't get us into war," or "If the British can give us some security for what we give them." Only 22 percent were unqualifiedly against the President's proposal. When poll participants were asked their party affiliation, the poll revealed a sharp political divide: 69 percent of Democrats were unqualifiedly in favor of Lend-Lease, whereas only 38 percent of Republicans favored the bill without qualification. A poll spokesperson also noted that, "approximately twice as many Republicans" gave "qualified answers as ... Democrats."

Opposition to the Lend-Lease bill was strongest among isolationist Republicans in Congress, who feared that the measure would be "the longest single step this nation has yet taken toward direct involvement in the war abroad." When the House of Representatives finally took a roll call vote on February 9, 1941, the 260 to 165 vote fell largely along party lines. Democrats voted 238 to 25 in favor and Republicans 24 in favor and 135 against.

More proof Republicans might want to knock off the "It's 1939 - Hitler!" stuff -- they were on the wrong side of that debate.

(h/t Heather)

After news came out that Holder's DOJ seized two months of telephone records of AP reporters it sent a shock wave through the Beltway media and mostly left-wing bloggers. The fact that it's happening under a Democratic president is even worse, because the left has always stood for freedom of the press. Even though President Obama says he wasn't involved with this investigation and is now offering up a new push to pass federal shield laws, it's still a chilling example of judicial overreach with respects to said freedom of the press. I'd be just as furious over this if Dick Cheney had favorite henchman David Addington pull the trigger.

Now we get the news today that Fox News reporter James Rosen has been tracked by the DOJ since 2010.

Yahoo News:

The Justice Department spied extensively on Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2010, collecting his telephone records, tracking his movements in and out of the State Department and seizing two days of Rosen’s personal emails, the Washington Post reported on Monday. In a chilling move sure to rile defenders of civil liberties, an FBI agent also accused Rosen of breaking anti-espionage laws with behavior that—as described in the agent's own affidavit—falls well inside the bounds of traditional news reporting. (Disclosure: This reporter counts Rosen among his friends.)

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This is not a rhetorical question: Are the deficit hawks consciously trying to kill people? Do they begrudge even this minimal help? All the money in the world for war, but not to feed people? When you have so many people hanging by a thread, cutting the program that's putting food on their table seems like a recipe for a major crisis -- or a revolution:

A heated battle is brewing on Capitol Hill over cuts to the food stamp program, with lawmakers quoting Bible verses at each other and benefits for millions of people hanging in the balance.

Nearly 47 million people – one in seven Americans –  rely on food stamps for some or all of their daily sustenance, according to the Department of Agriculture, a number that has grown nearly 70 percent since the financial collapse of 2008.

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The day may come when the worst nightmare a crooked banker or compromised regulator can have begins with the words, "You have a letter from Senator Warren."

But before we get to that, here's an experience that may seem familiar: You're at a party or family get-together - a Sunday barbecue, perhaps - and someone says something like, "We need less government regulation." Next thing you know you're having an argument.Here's some advice for the next social event: There's no need to get into an argument. You can just ask, "How do you figure?"

With every unreasonable assertion you can ask a reality-based question like, "Where's the study that says that?" Once in a while they may cite a shallow white paper from sine right-wing foundation, but more often than that they won't even get that far. Soon the conversation will peter out with a "Well, uh ..."We can never go wrong asking questions. We only go wrong when we don't ask questions.

That's what makes this letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren so important. For five years we've watched the Justice Department ignore overwhelming evidence of bank crime, on grounds that Attorney General Eric Holder made explicit only last March when he said that "the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute... it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy."

The Securities and Exchange Commission, which has responsibility for pursuing civil bank fraud, has taken the same approach. So has the Federal Reserve, which has regulatory responsibility for the banking industry. They've all been saying pretty much the same thing: That criminal prosecution would destabilize the financial sector and put the world's economy at risk.

With this letter, Sen. Warren is asking these agencies a very simple question: "How do you figure?"

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Judge Jack Roach is a District Court Judge in Collin County (Fort Worth).

He has up and decided that lesbians are unfit mothers. It appears that he has had no help coming to this decision. You know, like scientific studies or child advocates. Judge Jack Roach thinks children would be better off living with a convicted felon father who really doesn’t want them than a lesbian mother in a stable relation who adores them.

A Republican Texas Judge has ordered a lesbian couple to live apart or give up custody of their children. According to Think Progress, Judge John Roach of McKinney, Texas has given Page Price 30 days to move out of the home she shares with Carolyn Compton and Compton’s two children from a previous marriage because he does not approve of Compton and Price’s “lifestyle.”

Compton cannot have anyone in her home past 9:00 pm unless she is related to them “by blood or marriage.” Gay marriage is illegal in Texas.

I guess that means her kids can’t have sleepovers and New Year’s Eve is gonna be mighty lonely for those kids.

Judge Roach calls himself a conservative. I thought conservatives wanted government out of our lives. I guess that doesn’t apply to the s-e-x part.

They want to stand there and watch that.

Juanita Jean blogs at the World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc.