Hastert: Road trips. Alternative fuel car shopping.

Antique car buff House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said he is going to buy a flex-fuel car.

from a column I wrote for The Hill, ( www.thehill.com ) a newspaper covering Congress…..

Hasterts road trips. Catching up with the Speakers travels: On April 24, Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) headlined a lunch in Chicago for Rep. Robin Hayes (R-N.C.); later Hastert attended a dinner for the Anti-Defamation League in the city. He was in Washington the next day for a reception for his KOMPAC (Keep Our Majority PAC) leadership fund. On April 27 he went to Lewisburg, Pa., for a Rep. Don Sherwood (R-Pa.) funder; on April 28, to Nebraska to help Rep. Tom Osborne (R-Neb.) raise money for his governors race.

This morning, Hastert hosts a KOMPAC breakfast in Washington. On Friday, the Speaker is in California to help former Rep. Brian Bilbrays House bid in La Jolla, and to Stockton for Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.). Bilbray is running for the seat vacated by the imprisoned former Rep. Randy Duke? Cunningham (R).

Hastert, an antique-car buff, is shopping for a alternative-fueled auto. The Speaker caught some flak when he rode a hydrogen-fueled car at a press event dealing with soaring gas prices and then was photographed changing cars back into his standard-fuel vehicle to return to the fold of his security detail.

Said Hastert in his latest blog entry of the potential of renewable-fueled vehicles: I rode in a hydrogen car recently. In fact, Im such a proponent of renewable fuels, I have plans to soon buy my own flex-fuel car that can run on E85, which is an ethanol blend.?