This should be engraved into the walls of the room where the committee meets to select the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel Prize Committee should be in the business of conferring celebrity on unknown human-rights and peace activists toiling in the most god-forsaken parts of the world; the people who really need the attention (and even the money). It should be in the business of angering powerful tyrants by giving their victims a moment in the sun. Choosing Barack Obama, who practically orbits the sun already, accomplishes the exact opposite of that. Let’s hope Obama eventually deserves this award. And let’s hope the Nobel Committee’s decision meets with such a deafening chorus of chortles and jeers that it never does something this stupid again.

Bravo to Peter Beinart for so clearly illuminating the reason that people with moral decency are outraged by the decision to give the award to this president at this time.