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SpaceX went public this week and, in doing so, made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. In the same swoop, Musk also made over 4,000 of his employees millionaires. Elon and his employees don’t have that money in a bank. Much of it exists in stock options. What no one can argue is that Elon created more millionaires in a shorter period of time than anyone else in history. This should have been a moment of celebration for Americans. Musk is a citizen, and his stunning success should have been an inspiration for a generation of potential innovators. Being number one often drives competitors

The 18th-century French philosopher Voltaire is to have once remarked, “Common sense is not so common” when assessing the lack of logic and basic reasoning prevalent in France during the Age of Enlightenment. He certainly had a knack for distilling his views of humanity in that era. The dominant questions confronting society in that time were markedly different than those which the U.S. currently faces, but his stark observation can still be applied to a distinct segment of American society today. The particular U.S. factions who support the “woke” and similar philosophies may hold that their beliefs are well-grounded in solid reasoning.

Every day, the negotiations with Iran remind me more and more of that wonderful movie Dog Day Afternoon, in which a couple of crazy guys pull a botched bank robbery, hold hostages, demand preposterous concessions to surrender the hostages, and finally, while under the impression they are being escorted to a plane that will carry them to freedom, one gets shot and the other arrested. In the matter of Iran, the hostages are the millions of Iranians being held by nutters who think that if they blow up the world, the 12th Imam, who is hiding in a well (Bi'r al-Ghayba) will return to eradicate evil and create world peace.

President Barack Hussein Obama wanted a monument in Chicago, and Chicago gave him parkland, patience, tax breaks, years of disruption, and now a tower that looks less like civic memory than self-regard poured into granite. The Obama Presidential Center opens to the public June 19 in Jackson Park, a historic South Side park once shaped by Frederick Law Olmsted's vision. The Obama Foundation calls it an “awe-inspiring 19-acre campus.” Many Chicagoans can look at the same structure and see something colder. The building matches the man's politics. Obama, the 44th president, sold hope in polished speeches while leaving the country more divided than he found it. My criticism of Obama has