In case you haven't heard, there's a marvelously civilized—even polite—way to boil a frog to death. Don't start with a rolling boil, either. After all, we are not savages. As fellow democrats ...

An old fable tells us the way to boil a live frog: If you put it in boiling water, it will jump out immediately, but if you put it in tepid water and slowly raise the temperature, it will stay until ...