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Wesley Pruden

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

WESLEY PRUDEN: Hillary Clinton’s trust problem

The girl just can't help herself. Hillary Clinton has a trust problem. Voters tell the pollsters they think she's a liar. Nobody but party hacks and feminist true believers trust her.

November 12, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: Ben Carson learns about his ‘place’

A black candidate for president learns the hard way that the media culture expects him to know a black man's place, and stay there. That place has to be in the Democratic Party.

November 9, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: Jeb Bush Just too darn nice for his own good

Try as he might, Jeb! just doesn't get it.

November 5, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: Vladimir Putin continues the late education of Barack Obama

The devil can quote Scripture, as any theologian can tell you, and just because Vladimir Putin says something doesn't make it not so. The big chief of the Russians has challenged the theology of the Church of Global Warming in advance of a convocation of nations this month in Paris to come up with ideas for monetizing a myth.

November 2, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: GOP candidates take on media in third debate

The rule in politics is that you can never win an argument with the man who buys ink by the barrel, so the wise man knows better than to start one. But paper and ink are not as important as they once were; knowing how to read is so 20th century. Just shut up and listen.

October 29, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: Hillary Clinton’s a sure thing again

The Washington landscape is littered with presidential sure-things who never made it. A month ago, Hillary Clinton was lying dead in the weeds, waiting only the undertaker's art to make the corpse presentable. Joe Biden was the man standing by to take the party's desperate call to 911.

October 26, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: Lies in the Middle East

A diplomat, as any deputy assistant associate undersecretary could tell you, is a public servant paid to lie for his country. Lies are the hard currency in the land of the girly men.

October 22, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: Hillary Clinton as first prisoner-in-chief

More than a few obstacles lie in Hillary Clinton's path to the White House, but the threat of an indictment, or even conviction and a term in a federal pokey, doesn't have to be one of them.

October 19, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: Democrats’ obsession with guns, climate change

The Democrats continue to be obsessed with guns and the weather, the two biggest things they can't do anything about.

October 15, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: Make or break for Hillary Clinton

This could be make or break week for Hillary Clinton. She still has the money, the name recognition, and the big donors, but her sinking poll numbers say the public is finally on to her, and besides, who wants the distractions of another round of Flem Snopes and his kin in the White House?

October 12, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: Obama a cipher in the White House

Perhaps it's not fair to blame Barack Obama for the mess he's making. The Middle East is where chaos was invented, after all, and perhaps not even the collection of incompetents and boobs the president has installed in the White House could make things this bad. Maybe it's someone else's fault. He blames the Jews.

October 8, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: Gumming up the works over Benghazi

Pity the American voter. Angry, frustrated and desperate, in successive elections he delivers more Republican soldiers to Congress, all in the spirit of Dr. Johnson's famous description of a second marriage as "the triumph of hope over experience." All that changes in Washington is the size of the nothingburgers.

October 5, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: When world leaders got garbage for lunch

They gave the world leaders, in town for the opening session of the United Nations, lunch in New York the other day and all they got was swill. The leaders munching on the people's dime said a good time was had by all, but that's only if your taste runs to garbage. The chefs cheerfully conceded that that garbage was what it was.

October 1, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: Attacks on Ben Carson

The civility and good manners crowd is attempting to destroy Ben Carson, but so far it isn't working. He said something about Muslim presidential candidates that was harsh but a mile this side of over-the-top, and instead of a ride out of town on a rusty rail he watched his numbers spike.

September 28, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: Farewell to Yogi Berra

"It ain't over 'til it's over," the wisest of the philosophers of sport famously said, but now it really, really is. They don't make 'em like Yogi Berra any more, who disdained cliches like this one to make up his own.

September 24, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: Fidel Castro, Obama angle for a piece of Pope Francis

Everybody wants a piece of the pope. Fidel Castro and his little brother in crime applaud Pope Francis' assault on the very idea of capitalism, and Barack Obama wants to use the pontiff as a recruit in his war on what he perceives to be the "social injustice" of thwarting the Obama agenda and threatening the Obama legacy.

September 21, 2015

WESLEY PRUDEN: GOP debate: This is how we get a president

The Republicans are still looking for the right someone to carry their banner into the election next November, and they're getting a pretty good idea now of who they don't want. That's the first step, after all, in making a choice, as any town belle could tell you.

September 17, 2015