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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

PRUDEN: The scam that will not die

We were all supposed to be dead by now, fried to a toasty potatolike chip. The global alarmists never quite got their story of fright and fear straight, whether by now we would be fried or frozen.

December 16, 2013

PRUDEN: The last living witnesses; they wore the yellow star and remember the Nazi terror

Those marked by the Gestapo for death were doomed. Only in the rarest of circumstances was escape an option.

December 12, 2013

PRUDEN: Waiting for Nelson Mandela without the tears

Nelson Mandela was an important man, a public man of native gravitas, certainly a patient man, and maybe a great man as our age measures greatness. It's too soon to know. We'll have to wait until we can get Mandela without the tears.

December 9, 2013

PRUDEN: British press horrified as London’s new mayor dares to proclaim the truth

Free speech is good, but sometimes dangerous in practice. Saying what you think can get you sacked in America even if it's something that most people think. Practicing free speech here in the old country is risky, too, but saying the wrong thing appears to be a misdemeanor, not yet a felony.

December 5, 2013

PRUDEN: Backlash in the ‘social dump’

'Benefit tourism' has little to do with authentic tourists and a lot to do with government benefits. The problem is not immigration, so much as migration, the free movement from country to country within the European Union.

December 2, 2013

PRUDEN: The deadly price of presidential weakness

A president has to be a resolute officer of his administration. If he isn't, he fails. When everybody gets his number, the new reality makes everybody miserable. That goes double when other presidents, prime ministers and despots get it.

November 28, 2013

PRUDEN: Obama’s full grovel to Iran

There's good news and bad news in Barack Obama's sucker deal with Iran. The Iranians get all the good news, and the West gets all the bad news. The only good news for the good guys is that the deal, like Obamacare, is President Obama's baby. Sometimes, the baby daddy has to pay up.

November 25, 2013

PRUDEN: The colliding myths of November

The myths collide, bearing friction between the legends the nation lives by: Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, John F. Kennedy at Dallas and Barack Obama somewhere, maybe on a golf course, dreaming of Obamacare one last time before it implodes. Like all myths, they don't bear close examination. They must be taken on faith.

November 21, 2013

PRUDEN: Israelis and Saudis in bed together?

Politics make strange bedfellows, as we all know, and sometimes it's a weird bed, indeed. You can bet that when Israel and Saudi Arabia snuggle under the covers together, it's a king-size bed, and there's an enormous bundling log between them.

November 18, 2013

PRUDEN: So who’s your daddy now?

The dilemma of Barack Obama and his loyal Democrats is the gift few Republicans could have imagined only a fortnight ago. It's the gift that keeps on giving, and Obamacare is no bastard child.

November 14, 2013

PRUDEN: French save U.S. from Iran and John Kerry

Rescued by the surrender monkeys. We must put away the insults and abuse of the French. They summoned the backbone at Geneva, where the tough guys of the West were trying to cut a deal with Iran to put the ayatollahs' nuclear weapons program in mothballs.

November 11, 2013

PRUDEN: What do Virginia’s losses say about next year and 2016?

Earl Long, the "late and great governor of Louisiana," once boasted that he knew how to fix an election, and a voting machine was no more difficult to master than a paper ballot. "I can make a voting machine play 'Home on the Range' all night long," he said.

November 7, 2013

PRUDEN: The dreamboat with barnacles

Chris Christie, en route to a blowout victory Tuesday in New Jersey, is not everybody's idea of a dreamboat, though he's bold, bright and looks like he could make a tight squeeze through the Panama Canal.

November 4, 2013

PRUDEN: Spoiled baby boomers infest self-indulgent White House

The Obama White House suffers from "the '60s disease." The affliction seems to be terminal. The president's men — and women — avoid taking responsibility for their blunders, show contempt for the nation's institutions.

October 31, 2013

PRUDEN: It’s not arrogance, just stupidity

What the Europeans are at last learning is something that it took Americans five years to learn; that Barack Obama is the master salesman of shiny but shoddy goods.

October 28, 2013

PRUDEN: Putting the shutdown in the shade

Hard times, as a wise old friend of mine was fond of saying, will make a monkey eat red pepper. That's why Democrats, who only yesterday vowed to hold the Maginot Line forever against Republican demands to delay the implementation of wise and wonderful Obamacare, are lining up now to burn their tongues with a dash or two of jalapeno.

October 24, 2013