Warm congratulations to President Barack Obama for being selected to receive the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” It is a proud and happy occasion for the President and for the United States of America. French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed well the international significance of the prize in his letter of congratulations: “. . . it sets the seal on America’s return to the heart of all the world’s peoples.”

The Nobel Committee’s announcement reads in part:

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. . . . Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.

Naturally there are concerns across the political spectrum about whether the awarding of the prize is premature or warranted at all. What has he accomplished, after all? Perhaps the White House itself is not entirely comfortable with the award—or at least its timing. For those interested in a hearty defense of the president’s worthiness and a well-stocked rebuttal to those who doubt Obama whether has earned the prize, Rachel Maddow shows that accomplishment of one’s aims is not always the criterion determining who gets the prize: by that measure, perhaps Desmond Tutu’s prize in 1984 was premature, or Woodrow Wilson’s in 1919.

You can read the president’s remarks upon winning the Nobel Peace Prize here. Here is a slide show of previous winners of the Nobel Peace Prize assembled by TalkingPointsMemo. And HuffingtonPost has collected the Eight Most Outrageous Attacks on Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize—which give further “material for thought” for our recent inquiry about whether conservatives (or maybe ultraconservatives in this case) are really Americans after all. Just asking.