In a fit of constitutional pique, U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, the Brooksville Republican, has fired off a letter to President Obama reminding him of his “obligation to obtain Congressional consent” before accepting his Nobel Peace Prize. Her blog-based research yielded a provision that restricts a president, while in office, from accepting a gift from a foreign state. There was also the ostensible precedent of President Theodore Roosevelt, the 1906 Nobel winner, consulting Congress about setting up a special (Industrial Peace) Committee with the Peace Prize money.
A consensus of legal scholars is that the Nobel Foundation, a private institution, is not tantamount to a “foreign state.”
As we well know, the president’s Nobel selection remains an understandably controversial one. But the point is now moot.
What Rep. Brown-Waite has done is give grandstanding a bad name.