Treating variables as constants is a sign of a damaged brain.

In the real world, almost any action taken by government is going to cause a behavioral response - and often one that is not intended. Wise people think through what is likely to happen with any given action. Unfortunately, the ongoing lame-duck Congress and the administration are again demonstrating the shortage of wise people.

Many Democrats, including many lame ducks, are still demanding that tax rates for entrepreneurs be increased under the absurd claim that not to do so will "cost" the government "almost $2 trillion over the 2011-20 period" in lost tax revenues.

To believe these bogus numbers that the Joint Tax Committee staff and the administration put out about the revenue loss, one needs to believe these variables are constant:

The anti-capitalist of the "Occupy" movement have a point: capitalism is proving unfair. But I would like to try to persuade them that the reason is because it is not free-market enough.

The market, when allowed to flourish, tears apart monopoly and generates freedom and fairness better than any other human institution. Today's private sector, by contrast, is increasingly dominated by companies that are privileged by government through cozy contract, soft subsidy, convenient regulation, and crony conversation. That is why it is producing such unfair outcomes.

For example, the finance industry upon which the Occupiers focus their fury, are protected from upstart competition by high regulatory barriers to entry, and handles the supply and demand of a good - money - that is priced by government fiat. For doing so, it pockets big bonuses even when arranging the issuance of bonds to pay for the bailing out of itself. It may be called capitalism, but it's not a free market, capitalism for real.

It's Good Friday!  My wife and I always personally celebrate Good Friday, because that was the day we met almost three decades ago.  It sure was a good day for us!

Sunday, of course, is Easter, a celebration of renewal, rebirth, and resurrection.  The Resurrection itself was 1,978 years ago (33 AD).  Today, America is being crucified on a Cross of Debt, and Congress will soon be faced with a choice to resurrect her or let her die.

By the time the House returns from "Spring Recess" on May 2^nd, federal spending will have exceeded the debt ceiling.  Expect to see a tsunami of enemedia scare stories predicting an apocalypse if the House doesn't cave and vote to raise it - such as this one in Politico.

The article encapsulates all the outright lies of the parasite class:  "the full faith and credit of the United States" hangs in the balance, the House GOP will "plunge the nation into default" if it doesn't cave, blah blah.

This is willful lying.  The federal government will continue to have plenty of tax revenue to service its old debt, to pay the military, but not for, say, Planned Parenthood or the EPA.  What really will "send global markets into a tailspin" is if the debt ceiling is raised and Uncle Sam continues his fiscal insanity.

So here we are, the moment has arrived, and it's ironic that it comes at Eastertime.

Was our great financial crisis caused by greedy and reckless bankers and Wall Street players?  Or by a broad range of individuals, financial institutions and governments who became less risk-averse and prudent?  Or by government housing policies that brought on the housing bubble and mismanaged the risks?

Without waiting for the evidence, many in the political class, and particularly those on the left, immediately bought into the argument that the financial crisis was caused by greed. This view of the cause provided much of the political energy behind the passage this year of the Dodd-Frank Act, also known as the financial reform act.

Peter J. Wallison, a former general counsel of the U.S. Treasury and now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), has debunked this argument, conclusively showing in a study that Barney Frank's government housing policies caused the crisis.

President Obama deserves credit for authorizing the execution of Osama bin Laden and for significantly intensifying the drone campaign against terrorists. He's largely stopped romanticizing the Palestinians; has recognized that Putin made an ass of him; and has even hinted that he might stand up to China on some issues. 

But even if he turns into a combination of Ike, Reagan and Carl von Clausewitz in the coming months, his administration's foreign-policy record will forever be defined by his disastrous rush to leave Iraq - then brag about it.

Does anybody at the White House look at a map? I realize that, thanks to the left's death-grip on our education system, we've stopped teaching trivial subjects like geography in favor of gender studies, but you don't have to be able to name all 17,000 islands belonging to Indonesia to recognize that simply quitting Iraq opens a terrorist superhighway straight from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, to Lebanon, Hezbollah, northern Israel and the eastern Mediterranean.

After days of vehement denials and indignant claims that NATO's recent attack on Pakistani outposts was unprovoked and deliberate, a "senior Pakistani defense official" has admitted that it was the Pakistanis who started the firefight with "mortar and machine gun fire."

His words come a bit too late to stop the firestorm of anti-Americanism and the damage to the Afghan war effort, but may prove useful if they prompt Washington to take a sober look at our "alliance" with Pakistan.

The stark reality is that ten years after we forced Islamabad into a shotgun wedding in the aftermath of 9/11, Pakistan is no more of an ally (let alone a "strategic" ally) than before, but an adversary with interests often diametrically opposed to our own.

A survey of the Pakistani press in the days since the border incident reveals a society that is in serious trouble. Hysterical anti-Americanism aside, stories included:

The U.S. Department of Education was created with the primary stated goal of increasing students' test scores, but test scores for 17-year-old American students have remained essentially flat since 1970. The department's budget has grown to a whopping $107 billion this year. Per pupil, taxpayer-financed education spending (adjusted for inflation) has risen by more than 200 percent since 1970 (and 150-plus percent since 1980). Clearly and unambiguously, the department deserves a grade of F.

The employees and bureaucrats at Education have been rewarded for failure each year by ever-increasing budgets, which give them more control of state education departments and local school boards. If you reward failure, you tend to get more of it, and if you reward success, you tend to get more successes. Thus, it is no surprise that test scores have not improved.

Suppose Congress said to the department, "We are going to cut your budget and payroll by 20 percent per year until test scores start improving, and if they have not substantially improved within five years, the department will be dust." What do you think would happen to test scores?