In January of 2011, several senators attempted major reforms to the Senate rules intended to thwart the kind of obstructionism that has reigned in the Senate every since Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) took over as Minority Leader. This effort failed due to opposition from both Republicans and many senior Democrats. Filibuster reform’s opponents did, however, agree to pass a minor bill eliminating the requirement that certain military officers and low-level political appointees be confirmed by the Senate. That bill now passed both houses of Congress:

The House gave final congressional approval Tuesday to a bill that would save the slow-paced Senate some time by eliminating the need for confirming nominees to some 170 executive branch jobs and 3,000 military officer positions. . . . Among positions that will no longer need Senate approval are a chief scientist in the Commerce Department, directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the top press spokesmen for the Defense, Treasury and State departments, members of the Council of Economic Advisers, the commissioner of education statistics, the Homeland Security Department’s chief medical officer, director of the Labor Department’s Women’s Bureau and members of the Mississippi River Commission.

Although this bill is a positive development, its impact will be limited. It does nothing to prevent a minority of the Senate from attempting to shut down entire agencies by filibustering essential personnel. It does nothing to prevent widespread obstruction of judicial nominees. And it does nothing to prevent the minority choking the federal government by making it impossible for the Senate to confirm more than a small fraction of a president’s nominees.

As a 2010 Center for American Progress report explains, Senate rules allow a small minority of the Senate to waste up to 30 hours of floor time before a single nominee can be confirmed. When these 30 hours are multiplied across the all Senate-confirmed political appointees a president needs to fill, it adds up to more time than any president is allowed to stay in office:

After the bill that just passed the House becomes law, obstructionist senators will still have the power to force the majority to waste more than 1,000 days Senate work days before a president’s entire slate of nominees can be confirmed.

There is some reason to be optimistic that more meaningful filibuster reform could occur next year, however. Every two years, when newly elected senators are sworn in, a brief window opens up allowing the Senate to change its rules by a simple majority vote, rather than the 67 vote supermajority the Senate’s rules normally require. Although Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) opposed serious reform efforts the last time this window opened, he has since recanted. Last May, Reid delivered a floor speech where he agreed that the senators who supported significant rules reform “were right. The rest of us were wrong.”

Last January, President Obama nominated federal Magistrate Judge Robert Bacharach to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Since then, Bacharach’s done little more than generate bipartisan support for his nomination. Even Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), an ultra-conservative who believes that Medicare is unconstitutional, called Bacharach “a stellar candidate” who “ought to get through,” and the Senate Judiciary Committee voted nearly unanimously to approve Bacharach. Only Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), the Tea Party senator who votes against every single one of Obama’s nominees, voted against Bacharach in committee.

So Bacharach enjoys widespread bipartisan support, including support from the Senate’s most ideological wing. He should be a shoo-in for confirmation — except, of course, for the fact that the Senate is run by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY):

Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is forcing a vote Monday afternoon on Robert Bacharach, of Oklahoma, for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, a nominee considered to be highly qualified and noncontroversial. The move is a direct challenge to Republicans who have leaked plans that they will block all circuit court judges for the rest of the presidential election year.

But it is also Reid’s only option for moving forward on the circuit court nominees this congressional session, as Republicans cite a loosely defined Senate tradition of backing off from filling circuit court seats in the waning months of a president’s term, dubbed “The Thurmond Rule.”

The “Thurmond Rule” — which doesn’t actually do what McConnell says it does — is named for the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC). Thurmond is best known for delivering the longest filibuster speech in American history in order to block a civil rights bill.

A day after 43 Senate Republicans unanimously voted to block the DISCLOSE Act from receiving an up-or-down vote, Democrats will try again for cloture at 3pm on Tuesday.

The measure, which lawmakers drafted in response to the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, “would require independent groups to disclose the names of contributors who give more than $10,000 to independent groups for use in political campaigns.” Here is what you should know about the measure:

1) It’s all about disclosure. The bill’s sole purpose would be to require outside groups who can currently spend unlimited sums of money on “independent expenditure” ads attacking and supporting presidential and other candidates to identify who is paying for the ads. Under current law, a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt group like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS can spend millions of dollars on attack ads without citizens ever knowing who is paying for them. Under the DISCLOSE Act, if a group spends more than $10,000 on political ads in an election cycle, it would have to identify the donors funding the efforts.

2) The Supreme Court backed disclosure. In his 5-4 majority opinion in the Citzens United v. FEC case, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote “disclosure is a less restrictive alternative to more comprehensive regulations of speech.” By an 8-1 majority, every Justice but Clarence Thomas agreed that Congress had acted properly when it required that donors be identified for political ads that do not expressly advocate for or against a candidate. But, while these indirect ads come with disclosure, Congress did not anticipate that Citizens United would allow outside groups’s ads to directly tell voters to support or oppose candidates, leaving a major loophole.

3) Republicans used to support disclosure. When Congress considered the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law in the early 2000s, opponents consistently argued that complete disclosure, rather than regulation, was the best campaign finance law. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who now dismisses disclosure as government-supported “harassment and intimidation,” once endorsed the concept and asked “why would a little disclosure be better than a lot of disclosure?” Fourteen current Senate Republicans who now oppose the DISCLOSE Act voted in 2000 for similar disclosure for 527 committees, the forerunner to these 501(c)(4) outside spending groups. And even Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who this March warned the lack of disclosure for independent spending would lead to “huge scandals” still joined with the Republicans to stop the bill in 2010 and yesterday.

4) Republicans are moving the goal posts on disclosure. The 2010 version of the bill included an array of provisions aimed at mitigating problems created by Citizens United, including restrictions on foreign-owned corporations’ ads and government contractors. Republicans like McConnell criticized that version as “117 pages of stealth negotiations in which Democrats pick winners and losers, either through outright prohibitions or restrictions so complex that they end up achieving the same result.” This year, sponsor Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is offering just a 20-page bill that contains solely the disclosure provisions, in hopes that Republicans would be more open to supporting it. None have.