A Midtown family was held hostage by its pet cat until rescue workers were able to trap the feline yesterday afternoon. It all started at around 3 pm, when Carmen — a 16-pound Russian blue with diabetes and a thyroid condition — turned on her owners, Rosa Davila and her son Victor Marte, 27, the Post reports.

MUMBAI, India - First Stephen Harper got by with a little help from the Beatles.

And four of the eight dancers were also Indo-Canadians.

Yahoo! News

A top Republican political fund-raising and outreach firm gives convicted felons access to political donors' credit-card information, according to three former employees.

Minnesota-based FLS Connect uses low-wage workers to make fund-raising calls for a bevy of prominent GOP clients. And many of those workers -- including those responsible for processing credit-card transactions -- have felony convictions, the former employees said.

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The claim that ex-felons have access to credit-card information was first made by former FLS employee Brian Jones in an interview last week with the website Politics in Minnesota (PIM). Larson denied the charge to PIM.

But in interviews with TPMmuckraker, two other recent employees, Alicia Baca and David Childs, backed Jones up. And Jones himself, a former felon who was recently fired from FLS's Phoenix office, told us he stood by his claim. "He is just a liar," Jones, 37, said of Larson.

Baca, Childs, and Jones explained that when a donor agrees to contribute money by credit card, they're told that they'll be transferred to a supervisor to handle the transaction. But in fact, the three said, they're transferred to another FLS employee in the same room. That person has gone through only a cursory screening process, and in no way acts as a supervisor to the caller making the fundraising pitch. Indeed, they said, he generally earns less money than the fundraising caller.

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All three former employees described FLS's Phoenix office as a haven for ex-felons, in part because Arizona makes it difficult for people with criminal convictions to find jobs, and FLS has become well-known among the state's inmate population for its willingness to hire ex-cons. "My cell-mate from prison got out before me and told me" about the job, Jones said.

Jones and Baca both estimated independently that about 75 percent of employees in FLS's Phoenix office had felony convictions. Baca said she thought the majority of validators did. Said Jones: "It did surprise me that these are the people doing the fund-raising for the GOP."

None of the three said they ever witnessed any improper use of credit-card information by FLS employees, and Larson told PIM that the firm has never experienced credit-card fraud during its ten year history. He reiterated that claim in the statement to TPMmuckraker, which also announced plans for the audit.

Said Larson:

In 10 years in business, FLS Connect has never had an issue with credit cards being mishandled by anyone. Unfortunately, this is a case of a few disgruntled employees - one of whom lied on his application and was fired for manufacturing inaccurate statements - making misleading and false allegations about our company. The confidence of those we do business with is very important to us and while there are blatant falsehoods in the fictitious claims made against us, we want to ensure the highest standard of confidence in our processes. The work we provide is so critical that we have decided to undertake an internal and external audit of all our systems and processes to confirm we are providing the highest level of security and performance. This audit began last week and will include a review from an outside, independent auditor in the weeks to come.

Jones, who began working for FLS in February, was fired late last month by Larson personally -- though the two have never met. Jones says he angered a potential donor by making a claim she felt to be misleading. The donor, Jones said, was a friend of the Ohio Republican candidate on whose behalf Jones was calling. She complained to the candidate, who complained to Larson, who fired Jones, he said.

Jones denies that he lied on his application. Larson told PIM that Jones wrote "no" on a section that asked whether he had ever been convicted of a felony. Jones said he left it blank, as he was advised by prison officials to do when seeking a job.

FLS Connect has built a reputation as a power player in the world of Republican political organizing, running fundraising phone-banks and engineering negative robocalls on behalf of the McCain-Palin and Bush-Cheney campaigns, the RNC, the GOP Senate and congressional campaign committees, and the campaigns of numerous top Republicans, including Governors (and 2012 presidential hopefuls) Bobby Jindal and Tim Pawlenty, Senators Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Jon Kyl, Bob Corker, Kit Bond, and George Voinovich, and Rep. Michele Bachmann. The FLS website used to boast an endorsement from Karl Rove: "I know these guys well. They become partners with the campaigns they work with." For his part, Larson is widely credited with leading the effort that attracted the 2008 Republican National Convention to St. Paul, Minnesota, and he the ran the host committee for the event.

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The three former employees who spoke to TPMmuckraker described a corporate culture in which poorly-paid, overworked call-center employees were encouraged to do almost anything to convince their targets to contribute money. In order to appear motivated by genuine grassroots enthusiasm, callers regularly conveyed to potential donors that they were calling from the candidate's -- and the potential donor's -- home state, by saying things like, "I'm calling about our great state of Texas."

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Both Baca and Childs -- also an ex-felon -- said that fundraisers' calls were monitored twice a day by a company supervisor in Minnesota. But once those two monitored calls had occurred, on-site supervisors would tell callers, as Baca put it, "do what you have to do to get a pledge." That directive led to an even looser approach from callers. Baca said she had heard some tell potential donors, falsely, that they'd receive a signed picture of President Bush -- a draw in some circles, perhaps -- if they contributed.

Callers were told not to end the call without extracting a pledge. "The only way we could let someone go," Baca explained, "is if they had a family member die, if they had a doctor's appointment -- or if they were a Democrat."

...

Employees are eligible for health benefits only after a year of service. And because turnover is so high, thanks to the grueling nature of the work, few workers last that long. Jones said it was ironic that FLS workers were sometimes asked to pitch potential donors on the evils of health-care reform. "Most of us would want health-care," he said.

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Still, business for FLS Connect seems to be as brisk as ever. According to the firm's website, it's currently hiring "telephone service representatives" for its Phoenix and Minnesota offices: "High School diploma and/or some college a plus. No experience necessary."

(source)

The health care debate will be restarted in earnest tomorrow as Senate Democrats expect the Congressional Budget Office to score their version of the bill, which includes the opt-out public option.

...

As TPM reported yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has no qualms forcing a delay.

Harkin, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said Democrats have mischief planned for the Republicans if they do that type of obstruction.

"If the Republicans want to stay here this Saturday and Sunday to read the bill, then let them stay here," he said. "We are planning to do something that would require Republicans to be there 24 hours a day, and if they leave the floor, we'll ask unanimous consent to dispense with the reading, and that'll be the end of it."

...

(source)

The nation's largest publisher of newspapers serving the gay and lesbian community has shut down.

Laura Douglas-Brown, editor of Southern Voice newspaper in Atlanta, says she arrived at work Monday to find the locks changed and a note saying parent company Window Media LLC has closed down.

The company's other publications include the Washington Blade, Houston Voice and South Florida Blade. Douglas-Brown says the other publications are also closing.

Steven Myers, co-president of Window Media in Washington, D.C., declined comment.

(source)