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you, Mr. President, they mean to destroy us. There's no question about it.”
Cummings went on to say that the court, as it was presently constituted, was exceeding its constitutional powers and was deliberately substituting its opinion for those actions which were taken by Congress under its powers, or by the executive under its powers. It was an exceeding of the judicial powers which were delegated to it by the Constitution. I have no notes on this, but as I remember it he referred two or three times to Marshall. He referred several times to the pattern established by Marshall, “which was perhaps all right for its time. They have exaggerated it. They are encroaching upon the legislative and judicial powers of the executive.” He went on to say, “You should abandon anything that remotely resembles the NRA and wash it out.”
Whether this mention that the Supreme Court was encroaching on the President's power by these decisions was not a very clever move by Cummings to excite the President, who supposedly loved power, I don't know. I have never been one who believed that Roosevelt loved power for his own sake. He was too lazy. A lazy man never really loves power. Lazy men get on a track where they can't pull back and in order to keep on they've
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