It’s time for me to mount my favorite hobby horse and decry media linguistic laziness. I am on the record here, there, and everywhere as believing that the word conservative should NOT be applied to MAGA Republicans. Call them reactionaries, wingnuts, radicals, extremists, right-wingers; call them anything but conservatives.

The latest crime against clear and accurate language was committed by headline writers after the Supreme Court heard the FTC firing case. That’s shorthand for a case with more cosmic significance because it could lead to the reversal of a 90 year-old precedent.

Here’s a headline sampler:

Reuters: Supreme Court conservatives poised to back Trump in FTC firing case

CNN: Takeaways: Supreme Court’s conservatives ready to back Trump on firings

NYT: Supreme Court’s Conservatives Have Already Narrowed the 1935 Precedent

The Times headline at least hints at the significance of the case as does this one from an op-ed piece by 3 Con Law professors, Looks Like the Supreme Court Will Continue to Overturn the 20th Century.

The right-wing justices are on the verge of doing something genuinely reactionary, overruling a 90-year-old precedent, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States.

My inner lawyer demands that I quote the first point of the Humphrey’s Executor case syllabus:

The Federal Trade Commission Act fixes the terms of the Commissioners and provides that any Commissioner may be removed by the President for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. Held that Congress intended to restrict the power of removal to one or more of those causes.”

That’s a fancy way of saying that FTC Commissioners can only be removed for cause. It’s a far cry from how Clarence Thomas described the ruling in a case limiting Humphrey’s Executor:

The 1935 precedent, Justice Thomas wrote, “poses a direct threat to our constitutional structure and, as a result, the liberty of the American people.”

Firing someone for cause threatens our liberties? The MAGA Six are a bigger threat to our liberties than sensible limitations on executive power. Sensible is a word associated with true conservatives, one of the last sensible GOP appointees on the high court brought low was Sandra Day O’Connor. She revered precedent and took a dim view of colleagues like Thomas with their inflammatory, almost hysterical language.

Sandra Day O’Connor was a conservative. Clarence Thomas is a reactionary eager to overrule a 90 year-old precedent. To use a venerable legal cliche, the overruling of Roe v. Wade has opened the floodgates for more precedents to go down the MAGA drain.

Repeat after me: Judicial conservatives respect precedent. Don’t call the MAGA Six conservatives.

The last word goes to The Smile: