Free Republic

Boston’s Mayor Menino continues to pop his moron pills every morning, and local businesses continue to feel the consequences. The latest story involves the city’s soon-to-be-shut-down cigar bars.  Menino’s Department of Public Health has ordered the handful of cigar bars that haven’t already been driven out of business by ridiculously high taxes to shut down by 2018, anyway.Why is Boston closing popular, profitable private businesses? To “protect the workers,” a.k.a. “the people who choose to work there.”“Anybody working in a bar of any kind shouldn’t have to breathe in secondhand smoke in order to make a living,’’ said Michael Siegel,...

SPOKANE, Wash. | As quests for freedom go, it’s not exactly the fight against apartheid in South Africa. But cigar smokers around the country are fed up with smoking bans that prevent them from enjoying stogies in cigar bars with friends. A rising number of states have moved to exempt cigars from indoor smoking bans, often by establishing cigar bars or smoking lounges inside cigar stores. Pro-cigar groups have sprung up nationally and in most states, spreading a message that their product is fundamentally different from cigarettes. Cigar smokers are not interested in exposing the general public to their pungent...