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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

Walter Matthau. (Associated Press)

Awash in a tsunami of trivia

The media is guilty of manifold sins, as God and everyone else know, but President Trump has misdiagnosed what's wrong with the media. It's not deliberate "fakery," but a tsunami of too much news badly edited, if edited at all. We're awash in information, much of it show-biz trivia that we don't need.

July 19, 2018
Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Associated Press)

Stumbling into hellfire in Helsinki

How does Donald Trump test the patience, forbearance, loyalty and endurance of the millions who trusted him to drain the swamp, restore a strong American voice in the world, cast out evil-doers and deliver America from the clutch of those who would trash the dream? Let us count the ways.

July 16, 2018
French President Emmanuel Macron. (Associated Press)

This is no NATO for deadbeats

The Europeans wrote the book on how to be successful deadbeats. We got another demonstration of that at the NATO summit this week in Brussels. Some of the chief practitioners of the art of welshing on a debt take a fulsome pride in their deadbeat pedigree.

July 12, 2018
Boris Johnson. (Associated Press)

There’s life in Old Blighty yet

The good ol' boys, if there were any in Old Blighty, could tell Theresa May how and why she finds herself in such a mess in London, with a Brexit disaster only inches away: "You always go home with the one who brung you to the dance." This is folk wisdom every conscientious mother should impart to her daughter, early and often.

July 9, 2018
President James Madison. (Associated Press) ** FILE **

Making book on a sure thing

I've got your judge right here: Gentlemen, place your bets. I've got Brett Kavanaugh at 5 to 2, Amy Coney Barrett at 4 to 1, and coming up fast on the inside, Ray Kethledge at 8 to 3. Kavanaugh has been on a bit of a fade, Miss Amy is holding steady over the past 24 hours, and some smart money is trending toward Kethledge. Looks like a down to the wire race.

July 5, 2018
Sen. Susan Collins. (Associated Press) ** FILE **

The inevitable search for the litmus test

Litmus test, litmus test, who's got a litmus test? Well, apparently just about every senator on the left. A litmus test -- a standard beyond which one won't go, like Barack Obama's famous red line in Syria -- was once derided as the mark of a rigid mind. Now that the independent mind has gone out of style, everybody wants to impose a litmus test.

July 2, 2018
Rep. Maxine Waters, California Democrat (Associated Press) **FILE**

Barking mad and proud of it

Bonnie and Clyde sometimes called themselves "bank inspectors," but they were only kidding. The Palestinian Authority, the famous terrorist collective pretending to be a nation, collects $350 million from the U.S. Treasury every year to pay "salaries" to imprisoned terrorists, make love offerings to families of dead terrorists, celebrate terrorists as heroes, build monuments to dead criminals, and other bad things. And that's no joke.

June 25, 2018
Sen. Chuck Schumer. (Associated Press) ** FILE **

Democrats in a lather over the good news

Barack Obama is miffed because he thinks he collected the tinder for a booming economy, and events ignited a booming economy and the Donald gets the credit. That's pretty fanciful, as most economists will tell you. But now Mr. Obama can watch with a measure of pleasure as President Trump takes heat for using the Obama example of how to deal with the children brought by their families to the hell on the border.

June 21, 2018
Stonewall Jackson. (Associated Press) ** FILE **

Is California too much of a good thing?

Cutting Texas down to size is always a good thing to do, and if we have to carve up California to do it, well, that's life. The current popular notion in California would divide the Golden State into three new states, something that could be no longer be called Golden but perhaps Plastic, Pewter and Brass.

June 18, 2018
Attorney General Jeff Sessions. (Associated Press) ** FILE **

Sex, lies and betrayal at the FBI

If Jeff Sessions and Christopher Wray want to clean house at the FBI, they'll be well advised to pack a good lunch. Cleaning this house will be an all-day job. The agency under James B. Comey has been more corrupt than we thought.

June 14, 2018
Muhammad Ali. (Corbis/Bettmann) ** FILE **

The rumble and the thrilla in Singapore

One hand giveth, the other taketh it away. President Trump, arriving in Singapore for his man-to-man with Kim Jong-un is, like nearly everyone else in town, giddy with anticipation.

June 11, 2018
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein   Associated Press photo

Panic time at Camp Mueller

If this is June, it must be time to indict Paul Manafort again. The clock is ticking, and the tic-tocs are getting louder.

June 7, 2018
Justice Anthony Kennedy. (Associated Press) ** FILE **

The gay times roll, but the Supremes stop the music

The Supreme Court can sometimes twist itself into a pretzel to write law. The court on Monday upheld again the Constitutional principle that freedom of speech includes the right not to speak, but it all but apologized for saying so.

June 4, 2018
Kim Yong-chul. (Associated Press)

The on-again, off-again Unpredictability Summit

Language is everything, as George Orwell reminded everyone, but today you can get words on the cheap and define them for yourself. A voice at the supermarket self-service check-out advises a shopper to "put your item in the bagging area." Does that mean the can of soup can go on the floor? The bag of potato chips on a nearby pastry bin? All are in the bagging "area."

May 31, 2018
Robert E. Lee. (Associated Press) ** FILE **

The Confederate gift to the nation

Memorial Day is done and gone, and millions of Americans probably still don't know what it's supposed to be all about, beyond a picnic with hot dogs and six-packs in the park.

May 28, 2018
A page from a Gutenberg Bible. (The Washington Times) ** FILE **

The wounded printed page strikes back

Fake news is everywhere, cluttering desktops, iPads, laptops, iPhones and all the other manifestations of the post-literate era when it's just too much trouble to find a reliable read.

May 24, 2018
Satchel Paige. (Associated Press) ** FILE **

Robert Mueller’s fishing pole needs a rest

Satchel Paige, the legendary master of the sinking curve ball and famous doctor of philosophy, had a few wise words that Robert Mueller could use just now: "Don't look back, something might be gaining on you."

May 21, 2018
James Comey. (Associated Press) ** FILE **

The collusion of lawyers is finally collapsing

Colluding, like canoodling, is all the rage. Robert Mueller, like a dog chasing his tail, has been trying for more than a year to find evidence that President Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin and the Russians to cook the 2016 election, which fate, providence, fortune and destiny decreed properly belonged to Hillary Clinton.

May 17, 2018
Joe Biden. (Associated Press) ** FILE **

Throwing rocks at the wrong villain

No man in America is more entitled to the nation's admiration and gratitude for sacrifice than John McCain. He's a hero in anybody's book, with no asterisks. An exclamation point, but no asterisk.

May 14, 2018