Wesley Pruden

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Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during a press conference inside 10 Downing Street in London, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2018. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, Pool)

And you think we’ve got it bad. We have the chaotic confusion over counting votes from the elections in Florida (so what else is new?), Robert Mueller’s endless pursuit of Donald Trump (or someone), heartbreak over a television reporter’s attempt to mount a coup from the White House press lounge, whether Maxine Waters will like the curtains in her big new office, and whether a new congresswoman-elect from the Bronx, can scrape together enough money to rent an apartment in Washington, where rents are higher than she expected.

All sad, of course, but we should consider the plight of our cousins in Old Blighty, if only to make ourselves feel a little better.…  Seguir leyendo »

Free speech, the driving principle of the American experiment in how free men govern themselves, is a principle that does not always travel well. Free speech requires constant defense and the careful attention of loving hands. Mere lip service won’t do it.

Americans are armed with the First Amendment, the most important amendment of all, and it does not guarantee polite or even responsible speech, but free speech. The humblest citizen is entitled to say whatever he pleases. He can expect to pay the consequences of irresponsible speech, but the government can’t stop him from saying it.

Certain politicians even here from time to time seem frustrated enough to want to create exceptions.…  Seguir leyendo »

Everything about the so-called deal with Iran, including the reputations of the men who negotiated it, is a lie. It’s likely to be a deadly lie for millions of people who will die on account of it. The world should mark well everyone responsible for it.

The first lie is that an agreement for more talk is already “a deal.” So far the only agreement is to further pursue “a deal.” President Obama couldn’t wait to take a victory lap. But not even Mr. Obama, desperate to make something he can call “a deal,” says there’s an actual deal. Look closely at the slippery “clinton clauses,” as they were once called, in his announcement Thursday: “I am convinced that if this framework leads to a final comprehensive deal, it will make our country, our allies and our world safer.”…  Seguir leyendo »

Movies may not be better than ever, as a Hollywood marketing slogan in yesteryear boasted they were, but the critics take movies seriously in North Korea. The chief movie critic in Pyongyang can kill a movie with a single review. He might even kill anybody who goes to see it.

Sony Pictures’ big Christmas flick, “The Interview,” which has been pulled from release and consigned to mothballs in an unannounced location where it is expected to be safe for now, is a comedy about the assassination of Kim Jong-un, the humorless ruler of North Korea. His head explodes in the final scene, with “head chunks” flying about in gleeful clouds of gore.…  Seguir leyendo »

Here we go again, and this time the panic is on steroids. The Ebola sickness is a horrific disease, and the virus that causes it is lethal and fast-moving. But the way much of the media, which is also lethal and fast-moving, covers the outbreak is even more horrific, spreading misinformation, fear and panic faster than a speeding bullet.

You might think we’ll all be dead by Thursday next. Ebola joins AIDS, SARS, MERS and avian flu that were supposed to have accomplished wipeout by now. Ebola is a dark word, redolent of sorcery and reeking of mystery, a word that rolls easily off the tongue, and it’s short enough to fit neatly into a headline.…  Seguir leyendo »

The shadows deepen and lengthen, memories grow dim, and some of the survivors of the tragedies of World War II scramble to preserve the recollections before the colors fade to gray.

There’s no shortage of ghosts prowling the cities and countryside of Europe. Remembrances of monstrous evil lie all about. None have tried harder than the progeny of the Germans who started it all to learn from the past, and recall without flinching the scourge and stain on history that is still unfathomable three-quarters of a century later.

An exhibit of photographs of the Nazi era, with the faces of human evil so familiar to the fading generations is on view now in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate.…  Seguir leyendo »

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.

The governments in both Jerusalem and Riyadh, each with a wary eye on Tehran, have separately concluded that Barack Obama and the Americans are unreliable partners in peace. These Arabs and the Jews have begun, on their own, planning a realistic response to the Iranian bomb that portends only catastrophe for everyone in the Middle East.

Once enemies, Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency and the Saudi government are working on contingency plans for destroying Iran’s nuclear-warfare facilities, if necessary, after the West — sans France — and Iran conclude a deal later this week in Geneva to appease the Iranian appetite.…  Seguir leyendo »

Saved 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.

Barack Obama and David Cameron, the Conservative British prime minister — often sneered at by the French as “the Anglo-Saxons” — were in fact ready to sign whatever stray piece of paper blew over the transom and settled down before them, and it was the French who said no, and said it loud for the needed emphasis.…  Seguir leyendo »

For once, there’s bipartisan agreement in Congress, this time about what to do about Egypt. Everyone recognizes a true dilemma, with no good choices. Rep. Peter T. King of New York, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, seems to speak for everyone: “The fact is, there’s no good guys there.”

Since nobody has the remotest idea of what to do, everyone falls back on the default position, the tried if not necessarily true. The left demands cutting off aid to the generals in Cairo, arguing — who’s arguing? — that they’re the kind of bullies you would never invite into your home and would hurry across the street if you saw them coming at you on the sidewalk.…  Seguir leyendo »