The Welcome to episode 48 of the Charles C. W. Cook podcast.

Happy Thanksgiving, the best American holiday.

I am of course thankful for a great deal not least the glorious victory that the

Jacksonville Jagu is staged last Sunday against the evil empire, the Tennessee Titans,

perhaps the most perfidious tyranny in the history of the world.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary,

very pretty phrase.

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I'll tell you this much. They pale in comparison to Jacksonville, Jaguar, hail in delicious of all sentences in the English language.

Even Shakespeare couldn't manage that one.

Perhaps because he's a Seahawks fan.

Now as is typical, I have been thinking about what I'm thankful for this year and this got me thinking of course about America

and his constitution and that got me thinking about an answer that Justice Antonin Scalia gave in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee a few years ago,

in which he made the case that the heart and soul of the American system is not the

Bill of Rights but is in fact separation of powers and indeed that it's our separation of powers that

ultimately keeps America free. Here's what Scalia said.

So when I speak to these groups,

the first point I make,

and I think it's even a little more fundamental than the one that Stephen has just put forward.

I ask them, what do you think is the reason that America is such a free country?

What is it in our Constitution that makes us what we are?

And I guarantee you that the response I will get, and you will

...