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While it doesn't appear in the job description, a key qualification for leading the Federal Election Commission (the nation's elections watchdog) is masochism.

The FEC was set up in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal as a check on poli...tical corruption and campaign law enforcer, but its bipartisan group of six commissioners frequently fail to reach consensus. Dozens of enforcement cases, some years old, remain unresolved.

Just over a year after our Politics Reporter Dave Levinthal released an exhaustive investigation into the FEC's dysfunction (http://bit.ly/1z1ESaT), the agency has a new leader at the helm. Dave spoke this week with new Chairwoman Ann Ravel about her hopes for the year ahead. See More

Our Juvenile Justice investigations are giving a voice to at-risk youth. Support the Center and we can continue to give a voice to many more people. Your donation will be matched dollar-for-dollar.

Questioning disciplinary tactics such as ...jailing youth that skip school are the core of what we're reporting on. We've also dug into the hardships asylum-seeking children fleeing violence in Central America face as they have no rights in the United States, including representation in asylum hearings. See More

One of the most controversial themes of Election 204 was the presence of social welfare nonprofits — dubbed "dark money groups" because they aren't required to disclose their donors.

In state-level races alone, 40 nonprofit groups together... spent an estimated $25 million on TV ads. It's only a small piece of the more than $850 million total spent on TV ads, but it's nearly double what nonprofits spent in 2010.

TV ads from these secretive nonprofits were also more successful than independent groups overall. Sixty-three percent of nonprofit ads either backed a winner or bashed a losing candidate, while just under 50 percent of ads from all independent groups were successful. See More

True charities that have been granted tax-exempt status from the IRS as a 501(c)(3) organization are strictly prohibited from taking part in politics.

But during the 2014 midterms, a handful of groups paid to air TV ads that dealt specifi...cally with candidates for political office. In one instance, ads from a partnership of pro-environmental nonprofits criticized several politicians for their support of fracking.

“We definitely were not intending to ask people to do anything at the polls," said Mary Maclean Asbill, an attorney representing one of the nonprofits involved. See More

That AT&T just won a $12.8 million contract to provide the federal government’s General Services Administration with new mobile devices isn’t itself particularly notable.

What is: Casey Coleman, an AT&T executive responsible for “deliverin...g IT and professional services to federal government customers,” oversaw the GSA’s information technology division and its $600 million IT budget as recently as January.

Former high-level government staffers, while generally prohibited from directly wrangling with their previous employer, may still play certain behind-the-scenes roles as private companies compete for lucrative contracts with government agencies. Officials both at the GSA and AT&T say all federal rules were followed during the bidding process. See More

16,000 gas-producing wells. Twenty-six air quality monitoring stations to cover a 5,000-square mile area more than twice the size of Delaware. This is life in Texas' Barnett Shale, where there fracking boom started 15 years ago.

The Barnet...t region is the longest-running experiment into what happens to people who live nearby fracking operations.

But oil and gas emissions vary greatly — so quantifying them, or the potential health effects from them, is difficult. When emissions are bad, Texas residents can call the state environmental agency, but conditions can change as quickly as the wind changes. One man refers to the struggle as "trying to chase air." See More

While the bulk of the U.S. defense budget is subject to spending caps for the next seven years, a "temporary" 13-year-old fund meant to support emergency combat needs in Iraq and Afghanistan avoids those limits.

The Overseas Contingency Op...erations fund is the sort of special war funding that should've declined and disappeared as operations in Iraq and Afghanistan wound down.

Instead, experts say, the OCO fund has morphed into a slush fund that the military, lawmakers and even the White House use to escape budgetary constraints. See More

If you aren't looking forward to shopping for a health insurance plan, you're not alone. Dec. 15 (this coming Monday) is the last day to pick an Obamacare plan if you want to be insured starting Jan. 1, 2015, but most people tend to put the... decision off until the last minute.

"Even with my background in the insurance world," our health care analyst Wendell Potter writes in this week's column, "I would rather have a root canal than sit in front of a computer for hours trying to determine which plan offers the best value."

But the insurance industry knows policyholders are reluctant to change plans, and some insurers are hitting customers with rate increases knowing that Obamacare members will simply renew coverage without shopping around. See More

The natural gas boom unleashed by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has piqued the interest of refineries and plants across the U.S. Now, companies like ExxonMobil and Shell have planned at least 120 expansions or add-ons to existing plants t...o capture cheap, abundant natural gas.

But those expansions won't come without an environmental cost — collectively, the projects have asked state regulators for permission to release 130 million tons per year of carbon dioxide equivalent. That's about what 28 coal-fired power plants would emit in a year's time.

A former EPA official told us that ignoring these emissions is giving the petrochemical industry a free pass, while the Obama administration is cracking down on coal. See More

By most measures of career success, two oil and gas well inspectors in Texas were doing everything right. They were earning raises, promotions and praise from supervisors. But last year, within months of each other, they were fired.

Though... they worked in different areas, both inspectors were supposed to inspect well construction or waste-disposal procedures. They say their adherence to rules intended to protect the public and the environment was their downfall — basically, they did their jobs too well.

One of the inspectors was fired after about six years on the job, the other after an 18-month stint. “It didn’t take long to see what was happening,” the latter told our reporting partner InsideClimate News. “Go through the motions, but don’t really do your job. That’s what everybody wanted.” See More

Leaked tax documents show Disney and Koch Industries both created tangles of interlocking corporations in Luxembourg that may have helped them slash the taxes they pay in the U.S. and Europe.

Without seeing the companies' confidential tax ...filings to the IRS, we don't know how Luxembourg tax deals may have affected what they paid in taxes. Luxembourg tax deals are legal with its borders, but could be challenged by tax authorities in another country.

“It is unfair and unaffordable to let another year pass without eliminating the unjustified corporate tax giveaways that force everyone else to pick up the tab for government services,” said Michigan Sen. Carl Levin. See More

A scientist who has worked for the chemical industry is being considered to lead the EPA office that determines which chemicals are toxic to humans, and in what doses.

That candidate, Michael Dourson (pictured below), runs a nonprofit cons...ulting group that maintains a chemical database meant to act as an alternative to the EPA's database. Much of the data in Dourson's database shows chemicals at low doses are safer than what the EPA says.

Dourson told us his company is not slanted toward industry. In 2013, 63 percent of his company's revenue came from government agencies or other nonprofits, the rest was from for-profit companies. See More

Just 4-years-old when he was diagnosed with leukemia, Jarrett McElheney isn't like most people suing over benzene exposure. But the lawsuit filed by his parents could represent the next legal battleground for the petrochemical industry — en...vironmental exposure to benzene.

Days after Jarrett was diagnosed, the Georgia family tested their well water and found a benzene concentration 26 times higher than the federal safety standard. A nearby bulk-oil terminal with a history of leaking petroleum tank wastewater has been eyed as a possible source of contamination, but even 16 years later, Georgia environmental officials say there's no definitive source of benzene.

Jarrett, now 20, is in remission. Lawyers representing BP and other owners of the oil terminal used industry-commissioned analysis to dismiss any link between benzene and childhood leukemia. “The oil industry has fought regulations and lawsuits for workers and adults. Now they’re going to do it with children,” Jarrett's mother told us. See More

When politicians or flacks say the United States has the world's best health care system, they're taking part in a very successful PR campaign that former health insurance executive Wendell Potter knows all too well.

As he writes in his c...olumn this week, the purpose of that ongoing campaign is to protect the profitable status quo by obscuring an empirical truth: when it comes to access to affordable health care, millions of Americans might as well be living in a third world country.

A upcoming documentary on this topic, "Remote Area Medical," follows an organization by the same name that was founded to provide health care to people living in remote villages. Today, most of their clinics are in the U.S. See More

For plaintiff’s lawyers helping sick workers fight a legal battle against their employers, a 66-year-old report helps show just how long the petrochemical industry has known that benzene is dangerous in low doses.

The report was prepared f...or and published by the oil industry’s main lobby group, the American Petroleum Institute. It links benzene to leukemia, and says “the only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero.”

“[The report] shows how industry didn’t want to share bad news with their employees. None of this information was made available to the average worker … Most of this stuff kind of gets lost in the weeds,” lawyer Herschel Hobson told us. See More

Even the nation's biggest petrochemical companies would probably have no problem admitting that high doses of benzene, a sweet-smelling component of crude oil, will kill you.

Publicly, they'll also say they paid for research into benzene ...because of a "commitment to health [and] safety" or better understanding of the chemical.

But in response to a study that showed there's actually no safe threshold for people working with the chemical, the petrochemical industry spent at least $36 million on their own research "designed to protect member company interests." We reviewed more than 20,000 pages of internal records and found evidence of the industry's "comprehensive strategy" for defending against workers’ legal claims.

(For anyone who's interested, we've made those 20,000 pages of benzene documents public and searchable here: http://bit.ly/1yja9pz) See More

After buying up airtime for more than 19,000 TV ads during the general election, outside groups supporting Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu have effectively ignored her during the Senate runoff.

Louisiana voters have seen fewer than 100 TV ads... from outside groups in favor of Landrieu since Election Day, that's less than 1 percent of total runoff ads.

Several conservative groups, however, have aired nearly 6,000 ads attacking her. Almost all of the ads from these groups attacked Landrieu, rather than promote Republican candidate Bill Cassidy. See More