Jealous that the Nobel Committee has passed on handing the Prize to their own personal douchebags like Bush, Cheney or Libertarian Old-Crank Ron Paul (R-TX), the Right Wing Nuts have come up with a brand-new reason to complain about President Obama.
From the American Heritage Foundation’s Matthew Spaulding quotes the United States Constitution has his source of the gripe:
A clause in Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution states: “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office or Trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign state.” That raises a question: Is the Nobel Peace Prize an “Emolument” — a gift arising from one’s office which includes some sort of monetary award with it?
Spaulding points out that Obama has 60 days to hand over the award (so they can deny he was ever awarded it in the first place). I’ll assume that if Obama doesn’t hand over the award, Spaulding and his band of Merry Goofs will hire the Sheriff of Nottingham to have the President of the United States arrested and tried for treason.
Spaulding opens his mouth and dumb things come tumbling out of it:
“The Commission, the group that gives out the Nobel Prize, is actually appointed by the Parliament of Norway, which is [to] say that it’s connected with a foreign state. This makes it very interesting,” the Heritage scholar notes. “In 1993, President Clinton’s own Office of Legal Counsel said that it didn’t have to be a foreign state acting in a formal way, but could be, rather, indirect. [This] seems to be a perfect example of what the Nobel Prize is — and the Founders put this clause in the Constitution precisely to make sure that foreign states didn’t unwarrantedly influence American domestic politics.”
Enter his conspiracy theory:
Spalding believes the Nobel Prize Commission intended to give the award to a president who had not yet accomplished anything, in hopes of encouraging him to do certain things in the future. Interestingly Nobel committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland has defended the choice of Obama, saying the prize should be an “instrument for peace rather than [a] stamp of approval.”
Barack Obama is the third sitting president to be given the award after Woodrow Wilson (D) and Theodore Roosevelt (R & Progressive Party). I’ll go out on a limb here, but I’m guessing Spaulding didn’t have a problem with those earlier two presidents’ award because they were white guys. It’s the black guys, you see, that can’t be trusted.
Give a black man a Nobel Prize, and he’ll kiss anybody’s booty-ass. Everybody knows that! Just ask Matthew Spaulding!
I’m going out on a limb and take a guess that this stupidity will be the new Fox News “Haunt” throughout the Holiday Season. They’re going to milk this stupidity throughout New Years Eve.
h/t Joe.My.God.