In a June 18 article profiling Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) wife, Cindy, New York Daily News reporter Rich Schapiro referred to the GOP presidential candidate as a “maverick” in the context of his willingness to accept an adopted daughter into his family. Schapiro wrote that after Cindy McCain adopted a baby in Bangladesh without informing her husband, “the maverick senator immediately accepted his new daughter, Cindy McCain said.”

Schapiro is only among the very latest to refer to McCain a “maverick,” a descriptor used by the media with great frequency, despite numerous instances in which McCain has aligned himself with the Bush administration or the GOP congressional leadership, and -- as in this case -- without providing an explanation for its relevance to the information being conveyed.

From the June 18 New York Daily News article:

And then, in 1991, Cindy McCain traveled to Bangladesh with a nonprofit group she had founded and ended up securing medical visas for two sickly babies she had come across at an orphanage.

She came home with one of the babies, Bridget, without telling her husband. But the maverick senator immediately accepted his new daughter, Cindy McCain said.