I urge everyone - male and female - to pick up the February 2010 issue of Maxim (the one with Amanda Bynes on the cover). Not for the soft-core cheesecake photos, not for the pictorial on one of Tiger's mistresses, not even for the hilarious story about British funnyman Steve Coogan. No, the reason why every American must read the February 2010 issue of Maxim is for one brief article called Welcome to Cybergate, by Simon Worrall.
Worrall's explosive story is subtitled The Mysterious Death of Bush's Cyber-Guru, and opens with the following teaser: "One year ago, as he was poised to testify in the case of the disputed 2004 election, Michael Connell met his death in a fiery plane crash. Was he the victim of an unfortunate accident, or of a right-wing conspiracy intent on silencing one of its own?" The article goes on to describe, in excruciating detail, just how Connell helped hack the results of the Ohio presidential vote, how Karl Rove was intimately involved with said election rigging, how a lawsuit accusing Rove and then-Ohio-Secretary-of-State Ken Blackwell of election fraud and racketeering was set to go forward based on Connell's impending testimony, and how Connell, an expert pilot with a state-of-the-art private plane in tip-top condition, mysteriously fell from the sky before he could give that testimony. Lou Harris, the father of the famous "Harris Poll," called the 2004 vote in Ohio "the dirtiest election in America's history," based on the fact that his exit polls - known to possess 98% accuracy - predicted Kerry winning Ohio by a wide margin. The fact that the Ohio results were rigged now seems indisputable; proving that Rove and Blackwell were responsible, with Connell's help, may forever elude our grasp.