Today, President Obama issued a memo barring registered lobbyists from serving on federal advisory committees, boards, and commissions.

In recent months, failures at BP's Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico facility injured and likely killed 11 oil rig workers and spawned an unprecedented environmental catastrophe; an explosion at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia killed 29 miners; and a recall of millions of Toyota vehicles occurred after an acceleration defect was linked to injuries and deaths. These events have a few things in common, not the least of which is that they all illustrate a governmental failure to effectively regulate business activity and protect the public.

In front of the Supreme Court, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced the introduction of legislation meant to diminish the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The much anticipated bill is titled as expected, the DISCLOSE Act, which stands for Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections. Four Democrats signed on as co-sponsors, including Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Al Franken (D-MN).

Roll Call ($$) reports on a CQ MoneyLine study that found that over the past twelve years many companies, unions and other groups often made a mistake of reporting only its in-house expenses on lobbying disclosure reports. The Lobbying Disclosure Act requires that entities with in-house lobbying disclose all lobbying costs, including money spent on outside firms, even though outside firms must also separately disclose revenue they receive from the clients.