One of the many Texas political blogs we read -- can't remember which one (e-mail me if you do) -- recently observed that it would just be easier to list the state House members who AREN'T running for House speaker, rather than list the ones who ARE running.

The same could be said for our interactive map of House speaker candidates.

We've just added three more people to our map this afternoon: Declared candidates Brian McCall of Plano and Joe Smithee of Amarillo, and another key behind-the-scenes player, Rep. Charlie Geren of Fort Worth. (All three men are Republicans.) We added Rep. Joe Straus on Saturday -- he's the San Antonio Republican who may be the leading candidate among the Anybody-But-Craddick members of his party.

So, I now count 10 Republicans in the race, including Craddick himself, and five Dems. They're represented on our map by balloon icons. We also have plotted three other key players working behind the scenes -- two Republicans and one Democrat.

We'll keep adding to our map if more candidates declare or other legislators take a prominent role in shaping the race.

But here's one other cool thing you might not know about our Google Map: If you like it, you can embed our map in your own blog or Web site. Yes, totally for free. (How to do it: When you've got the Google Map up on your screen, look in the upper-right corner for the "link" link. Copy the "paste HTML to embed in Website" code and put it in your site. Or, you can hit the "customize and preview embedded map" to make the map appear larger or smaller on your site.) In fact, you can embed any or all of our Google Maps on your blog in the same fashion, including the map we did in October linking to all the state legislators' personal finance disclosure forms. And as we update our map, the version of the map embedded on your site will update as well.

Even if you can't embed our map on your site, we still want to hear from you about it. Are there other behind-the-scenes players we should plot on the map? Other information we should include? Do you think the map itself is useful? Got an idea for another map we should do? We want to know what you think. Feel free to leave us a comment below, or shoot me a message at jennifer@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at texaswatchdog.

Speaking of Twitter, don't forget that we've suggested two new hashtags for Twitter users: #txspkr for the House speaker's race, and #txlege for the upcoming legislative session.

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