true mavericks

Samuel Augustus Maverick: A Bostonian who got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants. Maverick headed for Texas in the 1800s where he became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand.

Fontaine Maury Maverick: A two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats.

Maury Maverick Jr.: A firebrand civil libertarian and lawyer who defended draft resisters, atheists and others scorned by society. He served in the Texas Legislature during the McCarthy era and wrote fiery columns for The San Antonio Express-News. His final column, published on Feb. 2, 2003, just after he died at 82, was an attack on the coming war in Iraq.

Terrellita Maverick: A sister of Maury Jr., Terrellita is a member emeritus of the board of the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. She's quoted as saying: “I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick, ... [he] is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase.

“It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’

“He’s a Republican,” she said. “He’s branded.”

Clipped and paraphrased from today's New York Times piece on the Mavericks of Texas, who give us the word "Maverick", and are known as a family with a "long history of association with liberalism and progressive ideals".