Everyone knows the old myth (rather conclusively proven as false) that if you toss a frog in a pot of boiling water, he'll hop out -- but if you place him in the water and then slowly raise the temperature, he'll sit there and boil to death complacently. The theory behind it is that sudden shocks will prompt a reaction, but slow changes will be ignored and tolerated -- right up until death.

I'm getting that feeling in regards to the left's machinations with voting. It seems every election cycle the abuses and fraud grow just a little more blatant and significant, and there's never any real crackdown on it -- which pretty much guarantees that we'll get more of it next election cycle.

This time, we had some doozies pulled. In Massachusetts, election "activists" helped voters at the polls -- mainly making sure that voters voted for "the right side." In California, a hotly-contested House race is undergoing a recount -- staffed in part by purple-shirted members of the SEIU, those renowned arbiters of principled non-partisanship, fairness, and calm, reasoned discourse. (I've previously referred to them as "Obama's Brute Squad.") In Arizona, a former ACORN official has struck a plea bargain on charges she participated in, encouraged, and paid for voter registration fraud in Nevada in 2008.

Oh, and remember all that Democratic talk about how big business was in the Republicans' pocket (or was it the other way around) and was spending everything they could -- thanks to the Supreme Court -- to defeat Obama and his party and his policies? Turns out not so much.

One benefit of this tolerance for a certain amount of corruption is to make it easier to steal close elections. And there certainly have been a few squeakers in the past few years. The Franken-Coleman Senate race, for one. The Washington State governor's race of 2004, for another.

Normally, this would be a good case for the Justice Department and its crack Voting Rights division to get involved. But we are "blessed" to have President Obama and his able right hand man, Attorney General Eric Holder, in office, and they've made it abundantly clear that these things aren't their top priority. Or middle priority. Or any kind of priority at all.

This leaves it up to we the people. In Houston, one group started it this year -- and got sued by the Democrats. Apparently some Democrats felt intimidated by a 65-year-old lady sitting quietly and observing the democratic process in action, and sicced their lawyers on them.

This shows just how lousy the Republicans are at "voter intimidation." They need to send some folks to Philadelphia to see how the pros do it -- such as the New Black Panther Party or Carlos Mantos.

But back to the topic at hand: I occasionally try to be the silver lining guy, the glass half full type. In this case, I find myself oddly encouraged by the voter fraud in Massachusetts. The Bay State is the bluest of the blue states, a state where the Democrats hold near-absolute power (with the occasional Republican governor to act as a beard, and the even rarer anomaly like Scott Brown). If they felt so threatened in that of all states, how bad must things be for them?

I can't wait to find out. And we all need to be watching very, very carefully for any future attempts to ass around with our elections.