With cigarette prices up and the number of smoke-friendly places down, the black market for loosies is now thriving on the streets. Rarely does a minute go by without a customer stopping just long enough to pass a dollar bill to Lonnie Loosie, known to the police by his given name, Lonnie Warner, 50. “The tax went up, and we started selling 10 times as much,” Mr. Warner said.

NPR gets about 2% of its direct funding from the U.S. government, through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. For NPR's member stations, CPB funding is about 10% of their total, with other federal, state, and local government sources kicking in another 6%.

How would the police be handled in a free society without government? The people of Egypt are giving us a glimpse.

Yes, it is a hoax on many, many levels. The first great error here is the mental habit that many have of thinking that big government and big business are somehow at odds. The whole of American history from the beginning to the present suggests precisely the opposite. From Alexander Hamilton to Goldman Sachs, a careful look at the history shows that there has been no major expansion of government that some sector of big business hasn't backed with pressure and funding.

Just in time for the Christmas holidays, the guys who brought us the Humble Indie Bundle have done it again. With their latest game pack, called simply Humble Indie Bundle 2, Wolfire Games are capturing imaginations.

Their pay-what-you-want model is proving very popular with customers, especially when the funds go not only to indie developers but the EFF and the Child’s Play charity.

Jeff Price, CEO of TuneCore, posted a fantastic six-part series titled "The State of The Music Industry & the Delegitimization of Artists" that surfaces this new perspective that desperately needs to be heard in the debate.
Here are some key ideas from the series:...

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that voters overwhelmingly prefer a free market economy to an economy managed by the government and think government economic control helps big businesses at the expense of small ones.

Imagine your home catches fire but the local fire department won't respond, then watches it burn. That's exactly what happened to a local family tonight.
A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground.
The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn't do anything to stop his house from burning.

Cuban President says state's role in the economy has to be reduced. Well no kidding? It only took you 51 years to figure it out.

Fed up with crime, citizens hit streets
Francis X. Donnelly / The Detroit News

Detroit -- With its handsome brick homes and trimmed lawns, Russell Woods is an unlikely setting for a revolution.

For the past three nights, however, residents from all over the city who are fed up with crime have descended upon this neighborhood in a northwest section of Detroit.

As they patrol the tree-lined streets, they're encountering residents who share their views.