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Wesley Pruden

Wesley Pruden

wpruden@washingtontimes.com

Wesley Pruden would have wanted to spend his final hours at his keyboard, deftly deflating the pompous, entitled and arrogant of the political establishment, and he came awfully close. The venerable Washington Times editor, columnist and journalism institution was found dead July 17, 2019, at his home, after putting in a full day at the newsroom on New York Avenue in Northeast D.C., where he had worked since 1982, four months after the newspaper's founding. He was 83.
His remarkable career began 67 years ago as a teenage copy boy in Arkansas, making him among the few old-school newsmen whose sharp political acumen, elegant writing style, and keen sense of the absurd allowed him to remain as relevant in the digital age as he was in the days when the rumpled shirts of reporters were splattered with ink.
To read his obituary, please CLICK HERE

Articles by Wesley Pruden

PRUDEN: Most important civil right of all

Well, to paraphrase a famous president of a slightly earlier time, "you're doing a heckuva job, Janet." That goes for everybody at the White House.

December 29, 2009

PRUDEN: Christmas morn’s amazing grace

The malls and the Main Streets fall silent. The ringing cash registers and the happy cries of children ring like ghostly echoes across silent streets. But the Christ born in a manger 2,000 years ago lives, liberating the hearts of sinners and transforming the lives of the wicked.

December 25, 2009

PRUDEN: How to lose friends for little gain

Rarely has a cowboy castrated himself in public like Ben Nelson, the senator from Nebraska, who becomes an object lesson in how a United States senator easily trades his "convictions" and "principles" for perfectly legal bribes from cynical party leaders.

December 22, 2009

PRUDEN: High season for fraud and farce

President Obama finally makes it back to familiar and frozen Copenhagen, scene of his earlier success in winning the Olympics for Chicago, trying to figure out a way to make zero plus zero amount to something big. His prospects are not good.

December 18, 2009

PRUDEN: Relief from rotten calls in Denmark

Barack Obama is eager to return to Copenhagen, where he couldn't rescue the Olympics for Chicago, for a dramatic last-minute liberation of the world just before we all sink into a boiling sea with the polar bears.

December 15, 2009

PRUDEN: Obama’s remarkable tutorial

Nobody teaches harder lessons than Experience, the lady who grades on the steepest curve. But sometimes even her most difficult student looks like he's beginning to get it.

December 11, 2009

PRUDEN: Saving world from Copenhagen crackup

Al Gore, a closet T.S. Eliot. Who knew? Harry Reid, channeler of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Who could have guessed? The heat of a globe that won't continue warming, despite all that Al can do, is getting to these guys. Are we watching a Democratic crackup?

December 8, 2009

PRUDEN: One large step, timidly taken

There's no fury like the fury of a disappointed wife who discovers that the man of her dreams isn't the man she wakes up with. This sometimes goes for presidents and their followers, too.

December 4, 2009

PRUDEN: More Dr. Bureaucrat horrors

A liberal mistrusts lessons bought with experience. For him, theory is all. He's the only man who would sit down on a red-hot stove twice. That makes well-meaning Democrats marks for shysters selling health-care "reform," global warming and appeasement of radical Islamists.

December 1, 2009

PRUDEN: Trouble afoot for high priests

Can this marriage be saved? The union of junk scientists, on the prowl for government handouts to pay for their computer games, and eager politicians sniffing an enormous new source of tax revenue was a match made in a dark alley. The always gullible mainstream media was the guest at the wedding, and everybody won. Only the public was duped.

November 27, 2009

PRUDEN: Obama’s due process doctrine

Willing student or not, reality continues to give Barack Obama a late education in how the world -- including the United States -- actually works. The president and his attorney general are giving the rest of us an Ivy League tutorial in constitutional law.

November 24, 2009

PRUDEN: The Third World and Obama

Now that every nut in America is equipped with a laptop computer, you're likely to run afoul of a nut on the loose almost anywhere.

November 20, 2009

PRUDEN: Obama bows, the nation cringes

A little traveling, like a little learning, can be a dangerous thing. Barack Obama on the loose in a foreign land is enough to frighten protocol officers and embarrass the rest of us.

November 17, 2009

PRUDEN: On vacation with Mr. Dithers

Every modern president takes refuge abroad when the going gets rough at home. (Before the jet airplane life was simpler and presidents could get respite with a train trip to Cleveland or Buffalo.) So President Obama is off to Asia, where never will necessarily be heard an encouraging word, but he won't have to listen to criticism in the Queen's English.

November 13, 2009

PRUDEN: Fatal reluctance to see evil

The general is eager to get the situation in hand, but he's got his tactics backward. And not just the general. So have a lot of other people in the government. Judgment flees in the face of a challenge by goody-goody intentions.

November 10, 2009

PRUDEN: Corpse sits up, gets nice salute

Neither Barack Obama nor Nancy Pelosi can be as clueless as they want us to think they are. The White House said the president was so uninterested in the results on election night that he watched a documentary on the '08 presidential campaign, no doubt eager to see who won. Mzz Pelosi, as oblivious of the scoreboard as a ditzy cheerleader unaware of which team has the ball, insists her side won the night.

November 6, 2009

PRUDEN: Day of reckoning for the GOP

Elephants are supposed to have long memories, but not all do. The royal household in Thailand even assembles its elephants once a year so a holy man can preach an annual sermon to the gentle beasts, urging them to mind their manners in the presence of the king. As eloquent as the homily may be, it has to be repeated the following year.

November 3, 2009

PRUDEN: Great Pumpkin soon upon us

The Senate is losing its grip on unreality, so it may be up to whoever can teach manners to cows and pigs to save us from the consequences of global warming. (We're supposed to call it "climate change" now, but some of us, being strict constructionists, remain faithful to the original text as set down by the founding father, Al Gore.)

October 30, 2009

PRUDEN: Something really scary for Obama’s Democrats

This is one Mr. Deeds who apparently isn't going to town. The collapse of the Democratic campaign for governor of Virginia speaks volumes - chapters, anyway - about what the body politic is trying to tell Barack Obama's Democrats.

October 27, 2009

PRUDEN: Obama’s Third World press rant

Throwing rotten eggs at "them lyin' newspapers" has always been great sport in America, and sometimes even effective politics. But it has to be done with wit and humor, which may be above Barack Obama's pay grade.

October 23, 2009