Issa Wusses Out on Holder Deadline, giving me another chance to explain why I'm doing what I'm doing.

The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves. ... whenever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence. Whensoever therefore the Legislative shall transgress this fundamental Rule of Society, and either by Ambition, Fear, Folly or Corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other an Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties, and Estates of the People; By this breach of Trust they forfeit the Power the People had put into their hands, for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty. -- John Locke.

CNN reports:

Holder granted extra time to turn over 'Fast and Furious' documents

A key congressional Republican who had threatened to bring a contempt citation against Attorney General Eric Holder if he did not comply with a demand for "Operation Fast and Furious" documents by 5 p.m. Thursday, has backed off his stated deadline.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-California, who has the backing of the committee's Republican majority, has granted a Justice Department request for an extension. No new deadline was set.

The Justice Department did not dispute the committee statement.

An aide to Issa said the congressman was satisfied that Holder had shown some flexibility on the documents issue in his testimony before the committee a week earlier. However, the aide added, "They won't have forever."

There is no way to interpret this as anything other than Darrell Issa and the GOP leadership wussing out, for whatever reason is left to our imaginations.

That said, let me review again my original reason for doing what I have done in the Gunwalker Scandal. These are in no particular order, and they include what I knew at the time I began (circa late December 2010) and what has become plain since then.

1. The Gunwalker Scandal and the murder of Brian Terry, two different but linked scandals, were chances to demonstrate the murderous indifference of the federal government, even to the slaughter of one of their own, if it came to executing a politically driven policy decision. To expose it cut at least two ways -- first, demoralizing other federal law enforcement members who would be convinced that their own lives didn't mean a damn to the policy makers; second, disrupting and deflecting ATF and FBI management from other murderous misadventures while they defended themselves against the charges, which were later proven to be true. The whole spectacle of federal law enforcement demonstrated to be arsonists in firefighter drag was demoralizing to the feds and a huge strike at their false claim of legitimacy.

2. The blow that Gunwalker has done to that legitimacy (to those who have been paying attention) is great and getting greater. No one on our side in this scandal, which now includes a formerly reluctant NRA and much of its membership, will believe any other claim of necessity for further disarmament of the citizenry.

3. Taken together, the Gunwalker scandal has bought us precious time to prepare for the eventuality of civil war, if the feds manage to shake off this scandal and evade responsibility again, as they did at Ruby Ridge, Waco and OKC. For having done so, they will have learned nothing and will come at us once again with some tyrannical scheme designed to start a shooting war with people who have decided not to take another step back. To my mind it has always been about buying time for those preparations of logistics, organization and training, rather than an expectation that we would in fact get justice in the end. Remember, I was there in the 90s. I knew up front that to believe that we would get justice in Gunwalker would be a triumph of hope over experience.

4. It was important to push this scandal into the light to give the system of both political parties one last chance to clean their stable before it was burnt down in the opening conflagration of the civil war their failure to do so would ignite. Morally, it was necessary to give them one last chance, so we could say we did everything we could within the system to hold that system to its own rules. If then it did not hold itself to its own rules, they would have proven my oft-stated dictum that if the rule of law did not protect the people from the depredations of the federal government, then it would not protect those in the federal government from the righteous wrath of the victimized people.

I pray every day that we can get out of this situation that the predatory federal government and its minions have pushed us into without violence. I will continue to do so. But I also pray that those of you who have benefited from this year that we have bought have taken advantage of it, and of every minute, hour, day and week that we buy from here on.

If you do, then we have not wasted our energies. For one way or another, with or without violence, this abomination and subversion of the Founders' Republic will not stand. In any case, I will be able to look my Maker in the face and say that I did the best I could to avoid civil war. And that, dear readers, is what has motivated me in this struggle from the very beginning.