of snake-oil, the great george will, and the story behind the term "maverick"

I cringe at the media today. I too often look for expert opinion only to find pandering partisanship. I am so thrilled not to have cable…Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann, and the rest of these snake-oil salesmen neither have the capacity nor the privilege to reach into my home.

And it is sad because these are high-capacity people who at some level have good intentions. These are people who are intrinsically persuasive and undeniably charismatic. It is just a shame that they serve a political dogma and not the populace. Their existence now only stands to polarize the country while their personal wealth and celebrity grows.

I just can't stomach it.

I read the New York Times, which probably makes me a communist to those who fancy themselves a deep shade of red and to anyone who doesn’t like to keep a dictionary handy while reading their newspaper. But I also love George Will, the conservative Washington Post columnist who is not afraid of intellectual honesty. Writers like him were the reason that I started my University career looking to be a journalist. Today, they are the reason that I still believe that there are a few experts (people exponentially smarter and more eloquent than I am) who can be trusted to deliver analysis worth reading.

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For your amusement, we take a look at one of the most repeated words of the campaign so far: “maverick”.

First, there is a Wiki article about the original maverick of Texas and then there is a story about the legacy that the original maverick left (including a San Antonio mayor named “Maverick”) and what the surviving members of the family (who still live in San Antonio) have to say about their name in the current political landscape…