As the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) knows a thing or two about secrets. State secrets, classified secrets and the like.

[IMGCAP(1)]It seems old Diamond Joe was on a fact-finding mission Monday in search of a very different kind of secret: those belonging to one Victoria, the purveyor of lacy negligees. An HOH operative ran into the senior Senator in the Union Station Victoria’s Secret, that trove of ladies’ underpinnings.

Biden, we’re told, was browsing around the more “G-rated” section of the store (as opposed to the racier bras-and-undies section), where pajamas and other casual lounging togs are on display.

Biden was wearing the pin that identifies him as a Member of Congress, and when our spy greeted him and inquired as to what he was up to, he mumbled something about shopping for a present.

The 66-year-old finally settled on a pair of gray sweatpants, the spy says.

Biden takes the Amtrak train to and from Delaware when Congress is in session, so we know he spends a bit of time in the station. HOH is going out on a limb here and postulating that the Senator was doing some last-minute shopping for his wife, whose birthday was Tuesday, although his office wouldn’t confirm that.

Hey, Senator, if you want a more discreet shopping experience, Vicky’s puts out a catalogue. And if you really want our unsolicited advice, we’d suggest something a teensy bit more romantic for your wife’s birthday than gray sweatpants.

A Whole Lott-a Blues. Former Sen. (and occasional singer) Trent Lott (R-Miss.) might not be around to entertain Senators these days with his musical stylings. But his son is. Chet Lott, a musician and a lobbyist in his father’s shop, Breaux-Lott Leadership Group, headlined two events this week for Senate spouses.

The younger Lott performed at a dinner at the Botanic Garden on Monday night and the First Lady’s Lunch, also held at the Botanic Garden, on Tuesday, spies tell HOH.

Lott’s act consisted of blues and other tunes. He debuted a CD in 2006 to benefit Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, and his newest album, “Wild Ride,” also features twangy blues covers and a few originals.

Former President Bill Clinton, who is, of course, a Senate spouse, wasn’t among the audience, we hear. Too bad it wasn’t held a week later, when HOH is guessing he might have just a little more time on his hands.

DNC Goes Sci-Fi. The brouhaha that was Saturday’s Democratic National Committee meeting to determine the fate of the Michigan and Florida convention delegations might have been strange, but it certainly wasn’t stranger than fiction, according to one attendee of the frenzied Washington session.

Jerome Wiley Segovia, a superdelegate from Virginia and a partner at the consulting firm Puente Latino Group, told HOH that the committee meeting reminded him of a short story that science fiction writer Isaac Asimov penned in 1955 — and HOH agrees that there are eerily similar parallels between the science-fiction tale and reality.

In Asimov’s “Franchise,” U.S. elections in the future are decided by a process that sounds strange until you consider the real-life Electoral College: A large computer chooses a single person to answer a series of questions, the answers to which the computer then uses to select the president. The plot focuses on that person whose answers will determine the election.

Segovia says he and some of the committee members felt a little like that person, whose wife in the story feared the couple would be blamed if the other citizens didn’t like the outcome. “It seemed to illustrate what lots of superdelegates are feeling and maybe what members of the Rules and Bylaws Committee were feeling,” he tells HOH.

And another bizarro coincidence: The fictional future election in which Asimov set the story was 2008. (Cue creepy music.)

Pundit Perez. During the will-she-or-won’t-she fracas on Tuesday over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) conceding the Democratic presidential nomination to Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), plenty of the usual talking-head suspects chimed in with their views. And so, strangely, did Internet gossip-hound Perez Hilton, who usually trucks in more Hollywood-flavored scandal fare.

Readers of Perezhilton.com might recall that Hilton staunchly backed Clinton until a few weeks ago, when delegate counts and fundraising numbers strongly favored Obama. Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, Hilton started pushing for an Obama-Clinton ticket in the general election, something he again called for on Tuesday morning when the Associated Press reported Clinton would drop out.

But Hilton went on the attack after Clinton’s camp denied that report. “This is a big mistake and just embarrassing now on her part!” Hilton wrote. “We are VERY disappointed. … She’s delusional! We are losing a lot of respect for both Clintons these days. Sad. Sad. Sad.”

The blogger seemed to calm down by Tuesday afternoon, when the AP reported that Clinton would be open to the VP slot. “We just want all the bad wounds that were ripped open to heal,” Hilton wrote.

And so does HOH — if only so Perez will go back to giving us the news we really care about, like whether those Brangelina twins have actually been born yet.

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