Via Jason Linkins at HuffPo, Obama's prize pissed off Richard Cohen. Who satirizes:

Palin, Vaughn, Rabinowitz Win Awards

...At the same time, and amazingly enough, the Pulitzer Prize for Literature went to Sarah Palin for her stated intention “to read a book someday.” The former Alaska governor was described as “floored” by the award, announced in Stockholm by nude Swedes beating themselves with birch branches, and insisted that while she was very busy right now, someday she would make good on her vow to read a book. “You’ll see,” she said from her winter home in San Diego...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2009/10/palin_vaughn_rabinowitz_win_aw.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

And, Linkins points to Spencer Ackerman's take on the notion of returning/declining such a prize:

But turning it down would be a slap in the face to an international community that is showing, in the most generous way possible, that it wants the U.S. back as a leading component of the global order. The issue is not Barack Obama. It’s what the president represents internationally: a symbol of an America that is willing, once again, to drive the international system forward, together, toward the humane positive-sum goals of peace and disarmament. The fact that Obama hasn’t gotten the planet there misses the point entirely. It’s that he’s beginning, slowly, to take the world again down the path.

http://washingtonindependent.com/63375/its-not-the-achievements-its-the-journey-itself

Conservative Outrage And Confusion

- Sam Stein

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-stein/obamas-nobel-prize-inspir_b_315167.html

I call it wishful thinking on the part of the Nobel committee. They're hoping for a pony, too.

Actually, a letter was sent:

http://humanityagainstcrimes.blogspot.com/2008/07/letter.html

And, there was a response:

http://humanityagainstcrimes.blogspot.com/2008/11/response-from-international-criminal.html

One week ago, in Glenn's Salon Radio: Patriot Act and FISA reforms thread, dephij flagged an AP article indicating that the Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 had passed the House (p.4). With a bit of digging, I found a reference in THOMAS [HR 2892/Sec 567](p.5). pow wow followed up and clarified the status of that non-binding measure shortly after (p.4). pow wow noted,

The vote was on a motion to instruct conferees - which, as the AP says, may be ignored by said formal conferees. Besides which, also according to the AP, the House and Senate leadership (as is all-too-typical these days) have apparently already settled on a final conference report behind closed doors, in advance of the formal, public conference - a final-but-for-rubber-stamping report, whose content is known to some small number of legislators, but probably not the rest. [emphasis orig]

Increasingly, it is apparent, or should be, to all that the opportunities to interfere with these positions agreed upon in advance are profoundly diminished. As pow wow has warned again, and again, much of the work of our so-called democracy is being conducted in secret. They'll tell us what we need to know, when they feel we need to know, and not one moment sooner. I'm intrigued by that last line from pow wow which suggests that We The People may not be alone in the group of the uninformed.

That's a copy, sir, and duly noted.

Apologies, publican.

But, you're being a bit of a jerk. I specifically used the word dismissed,

was dismissed for his resistance to go along with the UN's party line

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/10/07/afghanistan/permalink/3679d2e5c83cb830b3404f486b12f60b.html

And, I would point you to Peter Galbraith's op-ed in the WaPo where he specifically said,

Before firing me last week from my post as his deputy special representative in Afghanistan, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conveyed one last instruction: Do not talk to the press....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/02/AR2009100202855.html

Galbraith now wants to say, recalled? Golly, that's just fine with me. Now, please accept my permission to go find other nits to pick that, perhaps, have a bit more substance?.

Indeed, I've seen a wide range of options being debated in the mass media...

I'm genuinely interested where you have encountered this. A couple of cites to those instances in the mass media would be appreciated. Obviously, I missed them.

Our Secretary of State isn't the only one to "certify" the recent election in Afghanistan; the UN did, too. And, Peter Galbraith (brother to Jamie and son of John Kenneth), the deputy special representative in Afghanistan, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, was dismissed for his resistance to go along with the UN's party line.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/02/AR2009100202855.html