Up in smoke . . . From one fascist regime to another, small cigar manufacturers who escaped Cuba to start businesses here are now being regulated out of existence by the FDA and their cronies.

Why Independence? pt IV (3:20) . . . Because radical whig theory, of course. Never heard of it? It’s how our founding fathers understood freedom, and it’s the very basis of America’s form of government.

The Surveillance State (4:30) . . . Good news and bad news: the US has been spying on its own citizens for a lot longer than most people realize; and given our foreign policy it’s not likely to get any better. I guess that’s all bad news.

Trump, the Protectionist . . . Donald Trump’s version of fair trade is anything but free. More than that, it is in the opposite of free-trade, and Philip Magness of FEE explains why.

A Billion-dollar Object Lesson . . . The new home of the Minnesota Vikings will, according to economists from the Brookings Institute, attract neither tourists nor new industry. It’s a large-scale version of Bastiat’s broken window fallacy. A hard lesson to learn for Minnesota tax payers, but hey! Football!