One of the things that maybe surprised everyone after the assassination attempt on Gabrielle Giffords is the fact that the United States has not had a confirmed director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for four and a half years. Potential directors nominated by George Bush and Barack Obama alike, both of whom seemed to have the proper credentials for the job, were immediately opposed by the NRA. They objected to unbelievably minor transgressions on the part of the nominees, like revoking gun licenses of sellers who broke the law, and opposing giant .50 caliber bullets. And they were quickly able to find a US Senator to take up their cause and block confirmation.

Senators Tom Udall, Jeff Merkley and Tom Harkin have announced that their proposal for reforming the Senate rules now has 26 co-sponsors, all Democrats. But they represent a healthy ideological cross-section of the entire caucus.

Ben Nelson’s spokesman seriously walked back his opposition today.

It’s tempting to just laugh at the hapless Republicans who are flailing away at their initial promises, and to conclude that they don’t care about the deficit. This is all true, and they don’t. But that doesn’t mean they won’t engage in very consequential spending cuts.

Tom Udall has released the Senate rules reform package that he will introduce today for a vote, which he believes he can get passed with a simple majority. It includes most of the features that had been bandied about throughout the last couple weeks.

The new House of Representatives will be sworn in at noon today. We have a pretty good sense of their schedule of events for the first few weeks before the State of the Union address, and because the Senate is leaving town (another brilliant Democratic tactical decision), they will have Congress all to themselves.

It’s going to be a grand old time.

It’s worth mapping out what will be the biggest stories to chronicle in 2011, what I’ll be looking toward. I’m not at all surprised that this list includes only one actual set of legislation from Congress; the action will occur elsewhere next year.

So here’s the list of 10 (plus one), in a sort-of descending order of importance.

When I spoke with Jeff Merkley a couple weeks ago about Senate rules reform, he conceded that the Democratic caucus would have to arrive at a consensus set of rules before they would be able to hold together as a caucus and use the Constitutional option to change the rules by majority vote on January 5, the first day of the new Congress. That consensus has begun to take hold, and it comes in three parts, according to Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), who is leading the effort.

Dave Weigel reports that some Republicans, miffed by certain advances made by Democrats in the lame duck sessions, plan to reintroduce the “End the Lame Duck Act,” legislation that would ban future lame duck sessions after Congressional elections.

This is similar to “Cut-Go,” the new version of paygo brought forward by House Republicans, mandating that all spending bills must get offset with spending cuts elsewhere and not tax increases. The entire House GOP rulebook greases the skids for tax cuts without any restrictions on how they affect the deficit.

It’s the silent filibuster, the filibuster where the Majority Leader knows that it’ll take a week to get the head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission through the Senate, that is just a pure waste of time. And the rules of ending post-cloture time for nominations (because what’s to discuss or amend after that?), or ending the filibuster of the motion to proceed, would make those silent filibusters less painful.