Today's Washington Journal focused on foreign lobbying and the role that former government officials and K Street firms play in advancing the agendas of foreign governments and political parties in Washington. I discussed some of the background of the law that requires these firms to disclose information on their activities, the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, and talked about what these disclosures tell us about how foreign interests influence U.S. policies. Watch the whole segment below:

Here are links to the sites I mentioned that make these disclosures accessible for the general public. My favorite, the Foreign Lobbyist Influence Tracker--a joint project between Sunlight and our friends at ProPublica, is a great place to start research. It digitizes the information that representatives of foreign entities are required to disclose to the U.S. Justice Department. It has data from 2008 and 2009, and we'll be updating it this summer with information from 2010 filings. To see the latest disclosures by foreign agents, check out our Lobbying Tracker.

I mentioned Sunlight's Influence Explorer as a good user friendly database of money in politics and TransparencyData for more advanced users who want to get more down in the trenches (spreadsheets actually) of research. Numerous examples of Sunlight's foreign influence reporting came up during the CSPAN segment, including Paul Blumenthal's exposé of the Monitor Group lobbying on behalf of Libya and neglecting to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. I also mentioned an article in the now defunct Spy Magazine that explored the extravagant and nefarious lobbying activities of the late Edward von Kloberg III on behalf of tyrants and dictators. Don't miss Mark Steyn's obituary of him.

Thanks to C-Span's Washington Journal for having me on--it's a great show and a great format for discussing the work we do here at Sunlight.

Here are some of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies over the past week:

CQ Politics' Richard Rubin reports how House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (N.Y.), already beset by a series of ethics investigations, recently disclosed more than $500,000 in previously unreported assets. Rubin notes that earlier this year, Bill Allison, Sunlight's senior fellow, found similar problems with Rangel’s previous disclosure reports. According to Bill’s analysis, Rangel failed to report purchases, sales or his ownership of assets at least 28 times since 1978 on his personal financial disclosure forms. Assets worth between $239,026 and $831,000 appeared and disappeared with no disclosure of when they were acquired, how long they were held or when they were sold, as House rules require. “I understand being sloppy, missing an asset once or twice,” Bill said. “But what this shows is he doesn’t take financial disclosure seriously. How else can you year after year have these inaccuracies? It doesn’t look like there is a lot of care put it into compared to other members. It makes people suspicious when all of a sudden you double your wealth. Without knowing how a member accumulated that wealth, people are going to ask questions.” The New York Times' David Kocieniewski reported on Rangel's discrepancies and quotes Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, saying the New York lawmaker’s haphazard approach to his finances had undermined his credibility in Congress. “Sloppy bookkeeping is not a valid excuse for a sophisticated member of Congress who is chairman of the committee that handles complex financial issues like the tax code,” she said. Glenn Reynolds, at his popular "Instapundit" blog, has followed the various Rangel stories and picks up on Bill's Real Time Investigations post responding to the CQ Politics report.

Halimah Abdullah, with McClatchy Newspapers, reported on a study conducted by the Center for Public Integrity that found more than half the $1.1 million in campaign contributions the Democratic Party's Blue Dog Coalition received so far this year came from the pharmaceutical, health care and health insurance industries. The report cites Center for Responsive Politics data to show how, on average, Blue Dog Democrats net $62,650 more from the health sector than other Democrats, while hospitals and nursing homes also favor them, giving, respectively, $5,680 and $5,550 more. Abdullah used Party Time data to show how coalition members are raising campaign cash at fundraisers.  McClatchy papers across the country ran the story.

Wired's "Epicenter" blog highlighted the Apps for America 2 contest finalists. Government Computer News quotes Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs' director, discussing the finalists.

Russia Today reported on ProPublica's and Sunlight's Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker, which allows anyone to search the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) to quickly learn what governments are lobbying our government and about what. "It's amazing how much lobbyist really do have an impact on public policy," Bill Allison is quoted as saying. "You can follow lobbying campaigns online and see policies changing." The whole interview can be listened to here. The blog of the Legal Times also highlighted the Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker, which they write "creates ways to search those records by legislator contacted, country, lobbying firm, client and issue. Previously, the filings were only available online via a Department of Justice Web site as non-searchable .pdf files."

MAPLight.org launched Money Near Votes, "a new government transparency tool making it easy to track special-interest contributions to legislators given within a month, a week, or a day of when a vote occurred." This new tool promises a new level of transparency by honing in on the role special interests play in shaping public policy. "Never before have these 'well-timed' campaign donations been highlighted in such an exhaustive, easy-to-locate format," MAPLight asserts.

Here are some of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies over the past week:

Last Saturday afternoon, C-SPAN broadcast an interview of Ellen Miller, Sunlight's executive director, discussing how the Internet is being used to provide transparency in the workings of government.

The Associated Press used data from the Center for Responsive Politics Chevron Corp. spent more than $12.8 million lobbying the federal government in the first half of this year, in an attempt to influence pending climate-change legislation and taxes targeting oil producers. So far this year, the oil giant has almost matched the $12.9 million they spent lobbying in all of 2008.

The Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker, the searchable database that allows users to easily follow the money and connect the dots within records of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) database, launched this week. ProPublica and Sunlight teamed up on the project that allows anyone to quickly learn what foreign governments are lobbying whom, how often and about what. Alex Knott with CQ Politics covered the launch and quotes Ellen saying how information contained on the site shows how effective lobbyists can be. "While it brings needed transparency to these filings, it raises the question of what lobbyists for health care, energy and other interests -- who disclose far less information -- are up to in Washington," she said. In this morning's "In the Loop" column, The Washington Post's Al Kamen highlighted the Tracker. "What? You don't have a registered foreign agent working for you?" he asked. "Everyone's got one. Even the Dalai Lama!"

Katherine Mangu-Ward, senior editor of Reason magazine, writing at The Wall Street Journal, penned a column titled "Transparency Chic," where she highlights several efforts by private groups and individuals to pry open government information. "Tech celebs like Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales have flocked to the Sunlight Foundation, which uses the Internet to improve meaningful access to government," she wrote.

ABC News' David Wright reported on the health care debate and includes a quote from Bill Allison, Sunlight's senior fellow, about the special interests attempts to influence the health care debate. Bill explained who's working for who: "Insurance companies battling providers. Drug companies battling insurance companies. Hospitals going to war against nursing homes. All kinds of institutions are looking to protect their interests."

McClatchy Newspapers editorialized about how the Obama administration is continuing some of the opaque practices of the Bush administration despite promises to the contrary. They cite Ellen's blog post from last week about the need for the White House to list presidential signing statements on its Web site in an easy-to-find manner as an example. A number of McClatchy papers ran the editorial, including The (Colorado Springs, Colo.) Gazette.

In today's edition, The New York Times reports on legislation that's meant to close a loophole lobbyists use to cloak their work for foreign clients. U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer and Claire McCaskill introduced changes to the Foreign Agents Registration Act earlier today, according to The Hill.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act, enacted in the 1930s, governs foreign lobbying.The law is outdated and needs to be updated to meet the needs of the current global nature of lobbying, according to The Times. The legislation would require lobbyists who represent foreign businesses, politicians and other entities to disclose more information about their relationships.

For instance, current law does not require lobbyists to register with the Justice Department if their meetings with American officials on behalf of foreign clients take place outside the United States. The Schumer-McCaskill bill would close the foreign soil loophole. As both The Times and The Hill report, the issue of foreign lobbyists has become an early skirmish in the general election battle.

While these are certainly welcome fixes, they might want to address the woefully inadequate public disclosure system as well. The FARA database is one of the most user-unfriendly sites ever devised by government, and that's say something. Why not require digital submissions of FARA disclosure forms (bringing it into line with the Lobbyist Disclosure Act) and provide some money for a better Web site, complete with downloadable data. Closing loopholes in disclosure is useful, but if the public can't get to the data, it doesn't do much good.