TV star Hayden Panettiere, LL has learned, is scheduled to join the D.C. delegation for a luncheon this afternoon hosted by the District’s shadow delegation.

Panettiere is buds with Shadow Sen. Paul Strauss, whom she met earlier this year while lobbying Congress on saving the whales. She taped a short YouTube voting-rights PSA with Strauss at the time.

More to come.

- As Obama clinches the nomination, Slate catches up on the Biden ring tones. They’ve got “articulate and bright and clean” as well as the old favorite, “You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”

- Sick of the ‘ol convention twitter feed? Brightest Young Things is still live-blogging Project Runway.

- Behold: The Secret History of Pop Cesspool, Volume Eight. This time, P.C. engages in some mid-80’s clandestine pool jukeboxing.

- All Our Noise give us a back-to-school playlist inspired by Buffy.

- The Post’s Laura Yao critiques “The Re-Education of Women,” a new “guide to men” written by area man Dante Moore. “Maybe feminism is dead,” writes Yao, who fits in a number of funny Moore anecdotes before the kicker: “And so it is that in this messed-up world where relationships between men and women are plagued by misunderstandings, we are all to take lessons from a man who says his best decision as a teenager was to stop treating women well.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

These superdelegates had at one time endorsed Hillary Clinton, but ended up casting their votes for Barack Obama:

• Most prominently: Harold Ickes, the longtime Dem operative who has been among Clinton’s most dogged supporters.
• Yolanda Caraway, PR strategist
• Hartina Flournoy, American Federation of Teachers
• Ben Johnson, DNC deputy chair
• Elizabeth Smith, DNC member at large
• Mona Mohib, DNC Asian Pacific Islander American caucus
• And the there’s Ward 5’s Harry Thomas Jr., who initially supported Clinton before making an agonizing switch to Obama.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty was late arriving to the convention floor and was not able to give the D.C. delegate tally from the delegation’s floor microphone.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton filled in with impromptu remarks, which local Dems chair Anita Bonds says Norton composed, with the help of Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans, within five minutes when it became clear Fenty might not make it on time.

Fenty, as mayor, is the official head of the District’s delegation, and Bonds says it’s “traditional” for the head to take the mike. It seems Hizzoner was delayed getting in to the arena, arriving less than 10 minutes late. After briefly greeting local delegates, Fenty roamed the convention floor before entering the bowels of the Pepsi Center, where he was whisked into the off-limits-to-press “Boiler Room” by his longtime political strategist Tom Lindenfeld to meet an unnamed VIP.

Fenty declined to explain his absence; the roll call vote had been moved up earlier in the day, Bonds says, and Fenty was trying to make it to the floor in time. “I was talking to John [Falcicchio, Fenty's political aide], every minute,” she says.

Fenty says he heard Norton’s remarks on his way onto the floor. “She said exactly what I would have said,” he says.

UPDATE: The District cast 33 votes of its 40 votes for Barack Obama, and seven votes for Hillary Clinton. The Clinton voters were Evans, former Ward 8 councilmember Sandy Allen, Ward 2 gay activist Peter Rosenstein, elected Democratic National Committeewoman Marilyn Tyler Brown, DNC member Mary Eva Candon, Minyon Moore of America Coming Together, and DNC member Eric Kleinfeld. Evans, Rosenstein, and Allen were pledged to Clinton; the rest are unpledged superdelegates.

Gotta credit Eli Saslow and the political team at the Post for the presentation on page A1 of today’s edition. Saslow came in with an insta-story on the Hillary delegates who are “still bitter” about their candidate’s standing in the presidential race.

Obvious story? Maybe, but look at it this way: As soon as Hillary finished her speech, just around 11 pm last night, I hit the sack.

When I got up, there on my stoop was a fully realized, extensively reported, on-the-spot piece on a major issue in the Democratic Party. At lunchtime, I opened the New York Times and found nothing so pressing, so of the moment. There was some stuff about race and how convention speakers weren’t playing up Obama’s as well as some news analysis and something about Ted Kennedy.

Good to see that the Post’s flood-the-zone approach to convention coverage might be yielding a dividend or two.

The Maryland Renaissance Festival. I’ve never been to one. Growing up in Oregon, I just couldn’t stomach all the earnest ladies in waiting and jousting knights. But I’m gonna brave Maryland’s version. Hopefully this busty Valkyrie will be back.

A local adult kickball league has organized an all-day bus trip and meet-up at one of this weekend’s Jimmy Buffett concerts at Nissan Pavilion.

Coincidentally, both Adult Kickball and Jimmy Buffett Concerts finished near the top of U.S. News and World Report’s most recent Things That Make My Butt Water rankings, now on newsstands.*

*U.S. News and World Report hasn’t really published a Things That Make My Butt Water issue yet.

From Bethany Bentley at the National Portrait Gallery comes word of yet another tribute to Olympic Ubermensch Michael Phelps:

A large chromogenic print photograph of Michael Phelps, taken by Ryan McGinley, has been installed on the first floor of the National Portrait Gallery’s north wing.

The photograph, which was first on display when the museum reopened in July 2006, shows Phelps underwater, with his right arm reaching toward the surface, bubbles streaming from his nose.

What imagery! A manorexic and submerged Phelps, carving through the water with those apish arms and that unnaturally long torso! Not for me, and here’s why: It’s a little disappointing to witness the deification of an athlete whose achievements aren’t fueled by steroids or blood doping (or in the case of baseball great Dock Ellis, acid use). Where’s the drama? The intrigue? The tragic flaw? The most exciting bit of news to come out about Phelps is that he eats a lot. Surely there’s more to this guy than his calorie intake?

The photo (which I’m pretty sure is the same as the one featured in this post) will be on display until January 2009, and it’s more of the front-page same: Phelps as aquatic monster. If the NPG really wanted to make a splash, it should have framed a larger-than-life picture of Phelps nearly bursting from his super suit.

Moby knows his D.C. voting rights.

Shadow Rep. Mike Panetta found that out after he introduced himself to the musician and DJ at a party he talked himself into last night, after Moby had played a set.

Panetta mentioned that he supported his activism on behalf of “net neutrality”—the idea that Internet bandwith shouldn’t be reserved for high bidders—but Moby (who’s blogging about the DNC, incidentally) wanted to change the subject.

“Without missing a beat,” Panetta says, “he said, ‘I’d like to work on the D.C. issue—it’s crazy that D.C. doesn’t have a voice in Congress.’”

And he’s willing to go farther than a mere congressional vote—ahem, Eleanor. “He went right up to statehood,” Panetta says.

“Welcome, D.C. Democrats!” Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said about an hour ago, at D.C. Vote’s protest in front of the Denver Mint.

About friggin’ time, was the sotto voce attitude of many DCites present.

Fenty arrived at 10:45 a.m., about 15 minutes into the gathering—after Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray and Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans had spoken, and congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton was well into her characteristically lengthy remarks. Fenty gave a one-minute speech, then initially joined elected officials behind a “No Taxation Without Representation” banner. As the speeches dragged on, Fenty peeled off and spoke to reporters gathered down the block. He rejoined a march back to the Crowne Plaza, the official D.C. delegation hotel, to cap off the rally.

Fenty’s tardiness is just another item on a growing list of perceived slights.

Last night, Fenty did not join the D.C. delegation on the floor of the convention. At first, Fenty said, “I just got in late, just a lot of things to get done.” Later, he said he he arrived at about 3:30 p.m. yesterday, well ahead of the night’s biggest speeches, from Virginia’s Mark Warner and Hillary Clinton. He says he did not enter the Pepsi Center last night, but stayed at his hotel, the Westin, where he says, “I really didn’t do much.” The fact that he’s staying there, of course, is an additional bone of contention.

About the hotel drama, Fenty said “what’s important to the residents of the District of Columbia” was supporting voting rights and getting Barack Obama elected.

But, LL asked, can’t you do that from the Crowne Plaza?

“You can do it from any hotel,” he said.

Tim Carman, our food critic, usually gives me copy. He sometimes gives me hairy Asian fruits to try. Occasionally he will bring by his dog, Coltrane Meatsack, to wag his tail in my direction. But this week Tim Carman gave me the koobface worm. I’ll be honest, I prefer the hairy fruits.

The koobface worm is a virus that spreads through Facebook and MySpace. I thought it somewhat odd that Tim, my Facebook friend, sent me a video message that said I’d been caught “making love” and that I really needed to see that video and, oh, also: “LOL.” Didn’t seem like Tim (especially that “LOL” part), but there was his little Facebook picture of the Biscuitville sign and I thought, well, maybe this is some sort of super funny joke.

The joke is that Tim had no control over this thing, it went to all or most of the people on his list and if you clicked on the video and followed some instructions on downloading the latest Flash player, you got wormed. The worm shut down my Facebook account because it sent spam to all or most of the people on my list. It also infected the Google search on my home PC so that clicking on any of the entries will redirect you to wherever the wormers want you to go.

This thing is not exactly new. Yesterday’s New York Times “Bits” column has it beginning in late July. Kaspersky lab has apparently found 27 variants of it, all of them directed toward the two most populated social networking sites. Facebook released a statement that it has “detected and contained” the worm and that “these efforts have limited the affected users to a small percentage of those on Facebook.”

Facebook also e-mailed me that my Facebook account has been restored, although when I login I’m told I’m still an evil spammer. Several messages to them have not been returned. Facebook has a phone number, which instructs you to send them e-mail.

Based on my old-person skills and some limited research, here’s how to protect yourself: Run a virus scan. According to an article on CNET, the best free one for this particular virus is Malwarebytes Anti-Maleware 1.25, which can be downloaded here. If you’ve already got the virus, my understanding is this might detect it and repair it. There is also a list of files that can be deleted if you disable system restore, which McAfee sort of explains here.

If anyone knows of other solutions, please fire away. I miss all those friends I haven’t talked to in 15 years.

DENVER—At today’s voting-rights protest outside the Denver Mint—more on that later—Shadow Sen. Michael D. Brown brought up Sen. Hillary Clinton’s speech to the convention last night. About halfway through, the junior senator from New York said: “I will always be grateful to everyone from all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the territories who joined our campaign on behalf of all those people left out and left behind by the Bush administration.”

That gratitude, of course, omits the District, which is neither a state, a territory, nor Puerto Rico.

“She forgot us, and our job is to make sure that people don’t forget,” Brown told the crowd, though he called Clinton one of the legislators he admired most. “She’s always done her job for us; she’s always supported state rights, but our job is to remind people that we’re here.”

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty agreed this afternoon that it was a snub. “I don’t know if it was a conscious slight…I wouldn’t say that without hearing the senator’s response.”

Peter Rosenstein, the head of the Clinton contingent in the D.C. delegation, says the line was a “clearly unintended omission,” calling the speech a “home run.”

“I didn’t even notice it,” Rosenstein says. (LL missed it too, but a friend immediately pointed it out.) But he does point out a crucial fact: “The reality is, D.C. voted 78 percent for Barack Obama…The speech was focused on the nation and not on D.C.”

“I’m more concerned about [Obama],” Rosenstein says, wondering whether the Democratic nominee will broach the subject in his acceptance speech Thursday. “He’s gonna be the next president.”

Rosenstein is scheduled to meet with Clinton this afternoon along with other top supporters of the erstwhile front-runner. He says he will mention the controversy to her.

In the mail today: State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, a collection that proudly announces on the cover that it features “50 writers on 50 states.” There’s a nice batch of writers essayifying on Georgia (Ha Jin), Maryland (Myla Goldberg), Ohio (Susan Orlean), and so on. Better still, D.C. didn’t get neglected: The book’s afterword is an interview with Edward P. Jones. The novelist and short story writer mostly expounds soberly on the District’s institutionalized racism, but his chat with Cressida Leyson ends on a more wistful note:

Do you ever wish that you belonged to a state?

No, I think I’ve just wished that we had the same rights that everyone else has…. I think it may have been ten years ago when this started, but D.C. license plates now have the phrase, “Taxation without representation.” I don’t have a car, but I think one of these days I’m going to find out a way to get one of those license plates just for myself.

Jones will take part in a signing and discussion of the book on September 16 at the Library of Congress; the event will also include a screening of a short film related to the book.

Princess Leia! Wasn’t she the one who saved the universe despite being, like, C-3PO’s daughter or something? Well guess what? PRINCESS LEIA IS BACK!!!!!

Except now she lives in the D.C. area and is you.

In anticipation of Leia-portraya Carrie Fisher’s one-woman show Wishful Drinking, which will bow Sept. 5, Arena Stage is holding a Princess Leia lookalike contest. Just take a picture of yourself dressed like Luke Skywalker’s girlfriend or whatever (but don’t stick Cinnabons on your ears and hold a spray bottle, because some wag has beaten you to it), and e-mail it here by Sept. 7, and you could win tickets to the show or at least bring a signed poster from Wishful Drinking back to your little robot farm on Tatooine.

Those are fleeting pleasures, though, compared to the pride you’ll feel when your coworkers see you dressed like one of Jabba the Hutt’s hootchies. Hey, those aren’t the droids you’re looking for!

DENVER—Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s strained ties with the labor community erupted into an all-out feud at the Democratic National Convention today, with D.C.’s main labor organizing group threatening to picket the mayor at future national appearances.

A flier provided to the D.C. delegation at breakfast here today decries Fenty as a “budget-shattering, union-busting, promise-breaking political boss,” calling Hizzoner out for his administration’s bungling of the summer jobs program, for schools opening “in turmoil,” and for routinely snubbing the D.C. Council and, yes, unions.

The campaign seems to be in no small part prompted by anti-union comments made by Fenty at a school reform event here in Denver on Sunday. “The American Federation of Teachers, which I don’t think does anything for the people of the District of Columbia, is weighing in against it,” Fenty said, as reported in the American Prospect. “And the only thing I can think of is that the heads of the union, they want to keep their jobs.”

Fenty, the flier reads, “has become the national poster child for reforming urban schools and streamlining city government. But the image-conscious Fenty is not the reform whiz kid. Far from it.”

Joslyn Williams—head of the Metro Washington Council AFL-CIO, which issued the flier—was here at the breakfast this morning. Fenty was not, and has yet to appear at any official delegation events.

Nathan Saunders, general vice president of the Washington Teachers’ Union, is also here in Denver, and he says the comments Sunday were not the proximate reason for the tussle, but was prompted by his “constant behavior toward public employees.”

“This is not just the WTU,” he says. “This is every public employee union in the District of Columbia.”

Saunders says there will be no picketing of Fenty here in Denver, saying the focus will remain on Barack Obama, but, “He’s going to be unwelcome in every city he goes to this day going forward.”

UPDATE, 11:35 P.M.:: Williams confirms there’s no immediate plans to picket Fenty here in Denver—“what we’re doing is informing folks,” he says.

“The plan is to find out where he’s going to be” while campaigning for Barack Obama across the country, Williams says, and send “truth squads” of picketers to follow him.

The Fenty administration’s moves, Williams says, are “not consistent with what Barack Obama and the Democratic platform has stated.”

At-Large Councilmember Kwame R. Brown says he is surprised by the union tactics. “I’ve never seen an anti-mayor campaign during a Democratic convention,” he says. “And I’ve been to three!”

He continued, “I’m a little concerned that we’re here supporting Democratic ideals and Barack Obama, and we have anti-Fenty literature….I’m disappointed it’s come to this.”

Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr. echoed Brown: “It’s unfortunate that to get attention, in some ways, it had to come to this.”

LL is told Fenty will be attending the voting-rights protest at the Denver Mint, scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Eastern. More to come.

UPDATE, 1:40 P.M.: Williams estimates he’ll be distributing some 30,000 fliers here in Denver, at the Pepsi Center and elsewhere—take that figure for what it’s worth. Fenty says of the unions’ move: “I think that’s 100 percent consistent with the 1st Amendment.”