Ignoring the Rule of Holes

You've got to hand it to House Speaker Denny Hastert: he's all about novel interpretations:

House Speaker Dennis Hastert accused the Justice Department Thursday of trying to intimidate him in retaliation for criticizing the FBI's weekend raid on a congressman's office, escalating a searing battle between the executive and legislative branches of government.

"This is one of the leaks that come out to try to, you know, intimidate people," Hastert said on WGN radio Thursday morning. "We're just not going to be intimidated on it."

Asked later Thursday whether he thought he Justice Department retaliated against him with the leak, Hastert replied: "All I'm saying is, here are the dots. People can connect any dots they want to."

[snip]

Within minutes of that report late Wednesday, the department issued the first of two denials that it was investigating Hastert. The speaker demanded a retraction from ABC News, which stood by its story. Hastert on Thursday threatened to sue the network and reporters and executives for libel and defamation.

So Hastert believes that the Justice Department is trying to "you know, intimidate people," by first leaking false information about him to an ABC reporter, and then almost immediately and officially contradicting the false information in the strongest of terms. One would think if the Department of Justice was truly out to stain the Speaker as he maintains, they'd let the stain "set," and not issue a near immediate denial of the charge against him.

Of course, logic hasn't factored into much of what the Speaker of the House has uttered in the past week, so perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised at his foolish consistency.