Skip to content
TRENDING:
Donald Trump
Advertisement
Author profile
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

** FILE ** Attorney General Eric Holder is questioned about the Justice Department secretly obtaining two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press, during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, Tuesday, May 14, 2013. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

PRUDEN: Mr. Obama and green persimmons

The Republicans who can't wait to talk impeachment should sit down, shut up, and be patient. President Obama may yet deserve impeachment, but we're not there yet. Patience, as anyone old enough to remember Watergate knows, is how this game is played.

May 21, 2013
President Obama takes a down moment in the Oval Office with his feet up. (Credit: Pete Souza)

PRUDEN: Obama finds his legacy

Barack Obama can relax and get to work on his hook shot and his putting. The presidential legacy he has fretted over is now clear, well established, safe and secure. The presidential historians can fire up their laptops and let the processing of words begin.

May 14, 2013
**FILE** Then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies on Capitol Hill on Jan. 23, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks against the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. (Andrew Harnik/The Washington Times)

PRUDEN: The betrayal at Benghazi

The Benghazi hearings have come and gone, and Barack Obama and the Democrats turn now to stuffing charge and countercharge down the memory hole. The lies the president and his men and (mostly) women told in the days after the great betrayal must be swept from sight. Can't everybody shut up?

May 10, 2013
** FILE ** In this Monday, Jan. 14, 2013, file photo, Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a press conference at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Ahmad Jamshid, File)

PRUDEN: A resistant culture of corruption in Afghanistan

The 21st century is a hard sell to a culture that prefers the 8th. The Europeans, loosely defined, keep trying in Afghanistan. It's 12 years and counting since the Americans replaced the Russians, and a lot longer than that since the British decided they had had enough, and beat it back to London.

May 3, 2013
**FILE** U.S. Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testifies Feb. 14, 2012, on Capitol Hill in Washington before the Senate Armed Services Committee to outline the Pentagon's budget. (Associated Press)

PRUDEN: How to intimidate a paperclip general

Political correctness is always petty, often infuriating, and sometimes does no permanent harm. But occasionally it's a threat to the nation's security. When a paperclip general at the Pentagon surrenders to the enemy at the first sound of the popguns, the harm can be permanent.

April 30, 2013
** FILE ** House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, listens on Tuesday, March 5, 2013, during a news conference on Capitol Hill following a Republican strategy session. (Associated Press)

PRUDEN: Panic on Capitol Hill

When crunch time comes, when the chips are down, when the rubber meets the road — employ the cliché of your choice — Americans can put away their selfish concerns and come together in common cause. Even Congress, our only native criminal class.

April 26, 2013
Dr. Kermit Gosnel

PRUDEN: The bottom of the slippery slope in Philadelphia

We've finally located the terminus of the slippery slope. It's on a side street in Philadelphia, in a modest three-story red-brick building, where a painted sign advertises dental, family planning, family practice, gynecological and physical therapy services. This is under an illustration of two happy parents, swinging a small child between them.

April 23, 2013
Winston Churchill

PRUDEN: Chipping away at Margaret Thatcher’s iron legend

Margaret Thatcher is getting her revenge on the Nancy men who mocked her in life, and who continue to throw rocks at her in death. Her reputation as "the Iron Lady" who towered over a plastic age is secure, and she's getting a funeral that her girlhood idol Winston Churchill got before her.

April 16, 2013
** FILE ** New Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel speaks March 1, 2013, at a news conference at the Pentagon. (Associated Press)

PRUDEN: The perils of blinksmanship with North Korea

Fat and obnoxious though he may be, Kim Jong-un, like his father and grandfather, is no slouch at blinksmanship. The point of the high-stakes game is to see who blinks first. Did America just blink?

April 9, 2013
President Obama

PRUDEN: A useful pipeline spill in Arkansas

It's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and a pipeline leaking on somebody else's front yard can be a godsend, too. The environmentalists who were waging a losing war against the proposed Keystone pipeline woke up to the news of a small pipeline leak in Arkansas and thought it was Christmas morning.

April 5, 2013
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un

PRUDEN: Big talk for a little fat boy in North Korea

A boy with his first gun can be as deadly as a sharpshooter with a fruit salad of ribbons across his chest, and President Obama and his generals are treating North Korean crackpottery as a genuine threat to peace and good order. But they're within their rights to get a kick out of Kim Jong-un's little-boy tantrums, too.

April 2, 2013
** FILE ** Essayist Christopher Hitchens speaks during a debate on Iraq and the foreign policies of the United States and Britain, in this Sept. 14, 2005, file photo taken in New York. Vanity Fair reports Hitchens died on Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011. (AP Photo/Chad Rachman)

PRUDEN: The sanctioned abuse of the faith

Atheists think they're on the march, "like a mighty army," as a favorite hymn of the church describes the followers of the Christ, and this angers and dispirits many Christians — before, during and after Holy Week.

March 29, 2013
** FILE ** Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

PRUDEN: Evolution of the wedding party

Sodomy is the latest hot thing in Washington. You don't have to participate in it to think how cool it is. The love that dare not speak its name has become the passion that shouts from the housetops. Closets are emptying all over town.

March 26, 2013
Mahmoud Abbas

PRUDEN: The late education of Barack Obama

A late education is better than no education at all, even for a president of the United States. The man who is a mighty legend in his own mind is even showing a little humility. Barack Obama, who usually finds someone else — usually George W. — to blame for every little thing that goes awry, finally admitted this week in Israel that even a synthetic messiah can make mistakes.

March 22, 2013
Harry Truman

PRUDEN: The puzzling papacy of Pope Francis

The new pope is a puzzle to nearly everybody, particularly to the politicians, pundits and other know-it-alls. He looks and sounds like a remnant of a previous time, thrown up in the squalid swamp of a trashy and superficial age. He's not at all hip and "with it." He's not interested in "moving forward," as in the current cliche. He projects humility and kindness and speaks of his Christian faith as if he really believes in the amazing grace of the Gospel. This makes the intellectual elites, and even some "holy men" of the various bureaucracies of modern Christendom, incredulous, nervous and embarrassed.

March 19, 2013
**FILE** Ronald Reagan (Associated Press)

PRUDEN: There’s nothing like a brawl

Two cats fighting on the back fence can ruin a man's sleep, but in the cat world, the noisy arguments between Tom and his feline lady friends rarely settle anything. All they accomplish is more cats.

March 15, 2013
Winston Churchill

PRUDEN: Obama packs for an Israeli adventure

Barack Obama, who stiffed the Israelis throughout his first term, is finally packing his bags for a visit to what we once called the Holy Land, before the world became an unholy mess. The Israelis have even put up an “app” on the Internet to enable everyone with a laptop to keep track of the trip in Hebrew, English and Arabic.

March 12, 2013