MAGICAL THINKING: Mr. Harvey Wasserman is coming to our happy little burg to lecture on the allegations of massive voting irregularities in the Ohio returns this past Election Day (Mr. Wasserman's opinion on the subject is here) , which may have cost Senator Kerry the Presidency. That the Republicans stole the 2004 Ohio elections is fast becoming a tenet of left-wing belief in this country. How else, the left argues, could a certifiable idiot / Machiavellian mastermind / tongue-tied dolt like George W. Bush win a free and fair election? It is strange, I think, that people who mock religious belief and believers so assiduously can nonetheless believe that if you beat a dead horse often enough it will come back to life.