When D.C. residents call their senators, the phone doesn’t ring in the U.S. Capitol.

D.C. Shadow Senator Michael Brown has created and is paying for two billboards promoting D.C. statehood to go up in Charlotte in time for the Democratic National Convention next week.

In a brief statement, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) became the latest public official to chime in on the scandal surrounding Mayor Vince Gray’s 2010 campaign.

Incumbent Shadow Senator Michael D. Brown headed off a challenge from a well-financed opponent, winning the Democratic nomination in yesterday’s D.C. primary.

D.C. Shadow Senator Pete Ross was released from the D.C. Jail last night after spending six hours of a day-long sentence he requested behind bars.

Pete Ross, a candidate for the D.C. shadow senator seat, was sentenced to a day in jail today for blocking traffic during a December protest on Capitol Hill. But unlike most other such cases, Ross didn’t try to avoid jail time. In fact, he insisted upon being sent there.

In the District, candidates for elected office spend time and money in the hopes of winning a position that comes with a paycheck, sometimes a hefty one. But for one candidate in the 2012 races, it seems that money’s no expense — and for a position that’s fully unpaid.

We missed this City Desk report that D.C. Shadow Senator Paul Strauss pleaded guilty last Friday on charges stemming from his DUI stop in Adams Morgan last year. Strauss is one of the District’s two elected shadow senators, a symbolic position charged with lobbying for statehood that carries few privileges and no pay. Following his guilty plea, Strauss received 11 months probation and must pay $400 in fines. The police account of Strauss’s arrest…

Update, 3:30 p.m.: The statehood site is now live, though it’s pretty basic. Just as quickly as the 2008 presidential campaign signs have come down, new ones have taken their place. Over the weekend, D.C. voting rights activists hung signs advocating for statehood. Designed to look like the District’s flag and emblazoned with Obama’s “Yes We Can!” slogan, the signs were the brainchild of Shadow Senator Michael Brown and paid for by the D.C….

Paul Strauss isn’t the only senator in recent history to be brought up on criminal charges, but he may be the only one whose credentials as a senator are somewhat iffy. City Desk reported today that a police affidavit states that Shadow Senator Strauss flashed his U.S. Senate credentials during an early-October traffic stop that resulted in a DUI charge. (He recently pleaded not guilty.) While speaking to Strauss, Rodriguez—who gave the affidavit—noted that his…