Confidence building at the Department of Justice

I guess Rahm Emanuel didn’t get this bulletin from the Department  of Justice advertising for some trial attorneys to work in their Civil Rights Division. If he had, he presumably would not have been so quick to refer to certain left-wing activists as “f – – – ing retarded.” (You’ll be happy to know that Emanuel is meeting with “disabled rights activists” today to put in a little groveling.)

Here’s a question: was it the Anglo-Saxon prefix or the substantive “retarded” that gave offense?  Maybe it was the combination of the two. In any event, if the Department of Justice guidelines are anything to go by, being retarded is a positive plus when it comes to earning a place on Eric holder’s staff. (“I already knew that,” you say?  Well, maybe I did, too.)

Don’t believe me, eh?  Here’s the relevant bit from their posting about want “up to 10 experienced attorneys for the position of Trial Attorney in the Voting Section in Washington, D.C.”

The Civil Rights Division encourages qualified applicants with targeted disabilities to apply. Targeted disabilities are deafness, blindness, missing extremities, partial or complete paralysis, convulsive disorder, mental retardation, mental illness, severe distortion of limbs and/or spine.

They don’t actually print the bit about being differently-abled from a cognitive perspective in bold face: that’s just part of my service to readers. I think it explains a lot—for example, the really moronic idea of trying terrorists in a civilian court.

The government, as Glenn Reynolds has been wont to point out, is in the very best of hands. (H/T to Andy McCarthy for sending me this little sign of the way we live now.)