You know the drill — another Wednesday, another Seven Days. No epic website outages here today (knock on wood!), so here are the news and politics stories you can read right now:

• More than 2000 low-income Vermonters could lose their housing due to the federal sequester.
• University of Vermont researchers are testing an experimental cholera vaccine by, well, giving people cholera.
• One Burlington Telecom advisor, claiming that Al Jazeera is "spreading Sharia," wants the service to carry conservative pundit Glenn Beck's TV station.
• Drones aren't just used for dropping bombs and spying! Here in Vermont, hobbyists are building their own remote-controlled flying machines for fun — and they swear these drones are innocuous.
• In this month's Poli Psy column, Judith Levine writes about the vagina, which has had a pretty up-and-down year so far.
• This week in Fair Game: Gov. Peter Shumlin jets to D.C. on the state's dime while asking workers to travel less. Plus, the gov talks pot decriminalization and the less-than-savory donors giving money to the DGA.

Grab it on newsstands, online or on the app.

How many state senators are live-tweeting lunch? Can you track down your rep on Snapchat? We don't have answers to those questions, specifically, but a new survey attempted to determine how widespread the use of social media and email is in the halls of the Statehouse.

Organized by the Vermont Technology Working Group, the survey asked all 180 state legislators what technology they use to keep in touch with constituents. Only 42 responded. But it's a start toward understanding which platforms are popular among lawmakers. A few key points:

• Ninety-eight percent of lawmakers use email in their capacity as elected officials. (The one legislator who said he/she doesn't use email is probably not reading this blog post.)
• Of those, 36 percent said they use email "less than monthly."
• Sixty-nine percent of legislators said they use social media; 31 percent said they don't.
• The city effect: 73 percent of Chittenden County legislators are on social media. In the rest of the state, 60 percent said yes.
• Which platform is most effective for speaking with constituents? Facebook and email tied for the lead, with 36 percent each. Fourteen percent of legislators picked Front Porch Forum as their top social media platform, and Twitter got 5 percent.
• Email is more popular for connecting with media, with two thirds of lawmakers picking that method to communicate with the press.

Regrettably, the survey did not ask how many have tweeted photos of their junk. Sorry, Carlos Danger.

Click here to see the full survey rundown.

New rules set to go into effect on July 15 will dramatically slash the number of homeless Vermonters receiving state benefits to stay in motels, a practice that came under fire from lawmakers this winter after emergency assistance spending on motel stays spending skyrocketed to $2.2 million fiscal year 2012 and roughly $4 million in 2013. 

The legislature cut its funding for that program to $1.5 million in this year's appropriations bill — and officials at the Vermont Agency of Human Services say the new eligibility rules will keep that spending in check. But advocates for the homeless are raising the alarm that the new rules are too strict, and will leave vulnerable Vermonters without any place to turn if homeless shelters are full. 

Chopping motel benefits before other relief programs are in place is like "pulling away the life raft before people know how to swim," says Rita Markley, who directs the Committee on Temporary Shelter (COTS) in Burlington.  

Erick Diaz, an undocumented Mexican farmworker who milks cows on an Addison County dairy farm, remembers being pleasantly startled by his first trip to Vermont's Statehouse. He'd trekked the hour and a half to Montpelier — after getting a coworker to cover his milking shifts on the farm — to explain to lawmakers why Vermont should issue driver's licenses to undocumented farmworkers.

"I was very surprised, because you just walk into the Statehouse, and [the representatives] allow you to talk and they hear your voice," said Diaz, who spoke with Seven Days yesterday by phone. "It was pretty amazing."

Lawmakers, it turns out, were listening. Today, Gov. Peter Shumlin will sign into law the bill that Diaz — along with many other migrant farmworkers and their advocates — campaigned hard to pass this legislative session. The new law will allow Vermont to issue so-called "operator's privilege cards" to individuals regardless of immigration status, for the first time giving undocumented immigrants the legal ability to drive on Vermont's roads. 

The bill passed the Vermont House in a 105-39 vote last month, after winning similarly overwhelming support in a 27-2 Senate vote in April. Diaz and his compatriots will have to wait until January 1 to apply for the new card, but he says he's hopeful that the change will radically improve the quality of life for the estimated 1500 undocumented farmworkers living in Vermont today.

"We are so excited waiting for January 1," said Diaz. "I'm pretty sure this is going to change our lives completely." 

This just in!

The Week Ahead is on indefinite hiatus. Actually, it's been placed on paid administrative leave. The Week Ahead declined to discuss the reason for the absence, but sources close to the situation said it related to an inappropriate incident in Montpelier last week involving the Scoreboard. And a Bengal tiger. And Mike Tyson. We'll have more on this developing story as we get it...

In the meantime, check back on Off Message often for the latest Vermont news and politics.

This week's edition of Seven Days is our first-ever comedy issue. But it's chock full of news and politics too:

• In Fair Game, Paul Heintz reports on how House and  Senate leaders evaded a tax showdown with Gov. Peter Shumlin in the waning days of the legislative session.
• And in a special edition of our popular blog feature "The Scoreboard," Heintz looks back on the 2013 session and tallies the big winners and losers.
• Vermont law enforcement officers report that huge volumes of heroin are being trafficked into the state. But where are the drugs coming from?
• Middlebury College is divided over a proposed natural gas pipeline through Addison County. College President Ron Liebowitz says it would provide cheap energy to the region and create jobs. Students and faculty worried about climate change — including Bill McKibben — say there are cleaner alternatives.
• If all that leaves you depressed, meet some of Vermont's funniest people here, here, here and here.

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It's difficult to capture the loopiness of the 48 hours preceding adjournment of the Vermont legislature.

Confusion reigns. Recesses abound. Tensions rise and fall. Pizza is eaten. Budgets are passed. Reporters get confused and quickly lose interest. 

Such is the state of affairs at 8 p.m. Tuesday as the House and Senate labor to finish the people's business and get the hell out of Dodge. 

We'll have (slightly) more serious coverage of the 2013 legislature's thrilling conclusion in Wednesday's print edition of Seven Days, but to give you, dear reader, a flavor of the moment in Montpelier, we give you this gem of a video of Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell (D-Windsor) demonstrating his totally sweet nunchuck chops:

[Full disclosure: This video was filmed late Monday afternoon, though we are quite sure the Windsor County senator would be more than willing to stage a repeat performance tonight.]

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For three peaceful days this week, Gov. Peter Shumlin and the Democratic legislature appeared to have resolved a months-long feud over taxes. But in a dramatic turn of events on Friday, that harmony dissolved into discord — stalling the legislature's adjournment and prompting the very real threat of a gubernatorial veto. 

Suffice it to say, "Kumbaya" is no longer playing on the Statehouse jukebox.

Dividing the Dems is a push by leaders of the House and Senate tax-writing committees — Rep. Janet Ancel (D-Calais) and Sen. Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden) — to enact progressive reforms to the tax code in the closing days of the legislative session. While declining to fully describe their plan, they say it would lower income taxes for the vast majority of Vermonters and raise them for a small minority — all in a revenue-neutral manner.

But the governor deeply opposes the plan, saying it violates the terms of an agreement he reached with House Speaker Shap Smith (D-Morrisville) and Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell (D-Windsor) earlier this week to avoid new taxes and spending. Shumlin claims that despite the legislators' assurances, their "on-the-fly" reforms would result in higher taxes overall and put at risk a recovering economy.

Throughout the Statehouse on Friday, the question on everybody's minds was whether the legislature would complete its business late Saturday and adjourn for the year. To do so, conference committees writing the budget and tax bills had to wrap up their work early Friday afternoon — but that deadline blew by without any signs of progress. 

At issue was whether Smith and Campbell would side with their committee chairs, Ancel and Ashe, and provoke a confrontation with the governor — or whether they'd pull the two back, close up shop and go home. 

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An hour after Sen. Peter Galbraith (D-Windham) took to the floor Friday morning, his colleagues were on the verge of bum-rushing him. 

With the Senate hoping to adjourn the next day, Galbraith (pictured at right) was making good on his pledge to stall the body's business in order to protest a campaign finance bill he has taken to calling "a sham." 

His colleagues, whose criticism of Galbraith is no longer off-the-record nor behind his back, had mostly drifted out of the room. But the Windham County senator kept at it, interrogating to no end his seat-mate and district-mate, Sen. Jeanette White (D-Windham), who had written an earlier draft of the bill.

White was hoping to send the legislation to conference committee, where discrepancies between House and Senate versions could be worked out in time to be signed into law this year. But Galbraith, who says portions of the bill are unconstitutional and indefensible, was hoping to amend the bill or run out the clock.

All of the sudden, the mild-mannered majority leader, Sen. Phil Baruth (D-Chittenden), stood up across the room to make a point of order. Describing it as "an airtight procedural motion," Baruth secured permission from the presiding officer, Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, to quote from Mason's Manual of Legislative Procedure and the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

"An ancient rule governing debate is that, quote, 'No one is to speak impertinently or beside the question superfluously or tediously,'" Baruth said. "I would rest my motion on the word 'tediously,' which means 'tiresome because of length or dullness.' The reason why I believe it to be airtight is that I believe the senator has spoken tediously, and I believe the lieutenant governor would have two options: to uphold my motion or to rule that this has not been tedious—" 

"Mr. President, is this a debatable proposition?" Galbraith interjected.

"No it's not," Scott said and then declared a brief recess.

When he unveiled a deal Tuesday to balance the budget without raising taxes, Gov. Peter Shumlin seemed to have squelched the legislature's efforts to thrust a greater share of the state's tax burden on wealthy Vermonters.

But proponents of a more progressive tax code appear poised Friday to make one last stand.

In the days since the deal was struck, leaders of the House and Senate tax-writing committees have been talking up the idea of moving forward with proposals to limit income tax deductions that mostly benefit the wealthy. In keeping with the framework of the deal with the governor, any revenue gained by doing so would be returned to middle- and lower-income Vermonters through slightly reduced tax rates.

"The goal of my committee has been to make the tax code fairer, and we believe that can be achieved in a revenue-neutral framework," says Senate Finance Committee Chairman Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden). "While reducing the special advantages to some deductions, we can lower taxes for as many as 200,000 people."

While Ashe and House Ways & Means Committee Chairwoman Janet Ancel (D-Calais) have been pushing behind-the-scenes to build support for their proposal, Shumlin has indicated he opposes it.

"I have made very clear that the consensus that has been built in this building, which I have urged, is to not take action on tax policy, but to finish up the work that we have, balance the budget and get home," Shumlin said during a Wednesday press conference. "And I think Vermonters want the legislature to do just that."

Now the question is whether House Speaker Shap Smith (D-Morrisville) and Senate President John Campbell (D-Windsor) are willing to risk a final confrontation with the governor by backing Ashe's and Ancel's plan.