Former Republican vice presidential candidate -- and GOP future presidential candidate? -- Sarah Palin took out after White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel today for referring to a group of liberal activists as "retarded."

"Just as we'd be appalled if any public figure of Rahm's stature ever used the 'N-word' or other such inappropriate language, Rahm's slur on all God's children with cognitive and developmental disabilities -- and the people who love them -- is unacceptable, and it's heartbreaking," Palin wrote on her Facebook page. Palin's son has Down's Syndrome.

Emanuel has apologized to Special Olympics chairman Tim Shriver for using the word "retarded," as reported here in The Wall Street Journal. (Emanuel modified the term with a trademark f-word).

UPDATE, Feb. 3 -- Shriver and other disability rights advocates have been invited to the White House on Wednesday to discuss the controversy surrounding the "r-word."

It's the second time a high-ranking White House official has apologized to Shriver; President Obama himself did so after making a Special Olympics crack on The Tonight Show back in March.

Palin, by the way, also figures to make news this weekend when she speaks to the Tea Party convention in Nashville -- and here's an op-ed she wrote for USA TODAY explaining why she's attending that meeting.

(Posted by David Jackson)