I find the controversy over Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize nomination rather fascinating.  For one, you have the major media outlets playing it as a big deal.  On the other side of the coin, you have a lot of bloggers who are shocked and appalled by it.  What most don't realize, and why a nomination really isn't all that special, is that pretty much anyone can nominate someone for the prize:

Nominations for the Prize may be made by a broad array of qualified individuals, including former recipients, members of national assemblies and congresses, university professors, international judges, and special advisers to the Prize Committee. In some years as many as 199 nominations have been received. The Committee keeps the nominations secret and asks that nominators do the same. Over time many individuals have become known as "Nobel Peace Prize Nominees", but this designation has no official standing.

Here is a database containing all past nominations.  Notable nominees include:

• Mussolini (1935, by a French law professor, and by the law faculty at a German university)
• Stalin (1948, by a Czech professor)(also, 1945 by a former Norwegian foreign minister, although the minister only wrote that Stalin was qualified for the prize, and did not formally nominate him)
• Kaiser Wilhelm II (1911, by the President of UC Berkeley; 1917, by a German professor and by a Turkish law faculty)
• Hitler (1939, by a member of the Swedish parliament, although the nomination was withdrawn before the Committee considered it)
• Alfred Ploetz (the founder of racial hygiene in Germany; 1936 by a Norwegian parliamentarian, for warning that war would harm biological reproduction)
• Neville Chamberlin (somewhat plausibly in 1926 for his role in the Locarno Pact; less so in 1939, with 9 nominations for his role in the Munich Agreement).

You might also remember the controversy over convicted and unrepentant multiple murderer Stanley Tookie Williams who was nominated for the Peace Prize multiple times by a member of the Swiss Parliament, and also the Nobel Prize in Literature by a professor at Brown university.

Actually being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is a much different matter.  And in that, I am proud that a member of my family, Albert Schweitzer, was given just such an honor in 1952.