It was bound to happen, sooner or later … The Chronicle has one, City Hall Hustle has one, even Speaker Joe Straus has one. Yes, everyone has a Twitter account (much to the chagrin, we imagine, of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg), and now so does Legeland, our pages dedicated to covering the 81st Legislature. So sign up and find another way to be bombarded with data (we promise not to tweet too late. Unless the session runs into the wee small hours of the morning, in which case it's your own fault for not turning your phone off when you go to bed.)

If you caught our footage from last week's press gaggle/breakfast schmoozefest in the speaker's apartment, courtesy of Speaker Joe Straus, you may have been left wondering, well, how nice is it the most exclusive residence in downtown Austin? Worry no more, architecture fans: [video-1] It's interesting to see exactly where all that donated money that Rep. Tom Craddick, R-Midland, spent on the place when he was speaker. Plus, if you listen carefully, you'll find out the speaker's favorite dessert.

The Texas Dept. of State Health Services has ordered the Peanut Corporation of America to recall all products "ever shipped" from its Plainview plant, after inspectors found dead rodents, excrement, and bird feathers in a crawl space above a production area. Inspectors also found that the plant's air system wasn't sealed, and was pulling "debris from the infested crawl space" into the production area "resulting in the adulteration of exposed food products." The plant, ordered yesterday to stop production, may not reopen without DSHS approval. DSHS is now having lab tests run on food samples taken from the plant. PCA's Georgia processing plant is at the center of the current salmonella outbreak that has sickened some 600 people and contributed to the death of nine. Nearly 200 food makers that use PCA products are now listed on a recall list of some 1,900 products. Emails show that PCA's chief executive Stewart Parnell knew back in October that the company had received tests results that found salmonella in PCA products. Nonetheless, in January, Stewart sent an email blaming the outbreak of salmonella on "cross-contamination" of an open contained of peanut butter found in the kitchen of a Minnesota nursing home. For real. Not surprisingly, Parnell repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right when questioned by Congress earlier this week.

Two figures to muse over. The Texas House of Representatives is split 76-74, advantage Republicans. Chairmanships of House committees are split 18-16, advantage Republicans. Seems Speaker Joe Straus was being truthful when he said that there would be some power-sharing in the new balanced House. True, the Democrats didn't get the chairs on any of the big three committees (Appropriations, Calendars, and State Affairs) but they did get the vice-chairmanships on all three, and the new chairs are all drawn from the Dem-friendly Gang of 11 (well, more Dem-friendly than a lot of old Tom Craddick appointees. Speaking of Craddick, the Midland oil man goes from speaker handing out appointments to member of Energy Resources and State Affairs.) They're all raring to go: Appropriations was already meeting this afternoon, right across the corridor from Senate Finance, which has been able to take a lead on building its version of the budget.

San Antonio Democratic Sen. Leticia Van de Putte has joined with House colleagues to introduce a spate of women's and family health bills -- including a measure that would provide two weeks paid leave to parents with a new baby, new adoption or foster placement. Van de Putte and Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, D-San Antonio, filed a pair of bills Feb. 9 (SB 692 and HB 1057) that would strengthen Texas' family and medical leave laws to include a provision for paid leave, taken as sick or accrued leave benefits, or for employees without the accrued leave, as unemployment benefits. "It is unfair to force parents to choose between caring for a new addition to their family or their paycheck," said Van de Putte. "Without paid family leave that is exactly what we are asking many families to do."

After much waiting and speculation, President Barack Obama has finally named his pick to head up the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. And he's chosen the progressive top cop of the Seattle PD, 59-year-old Gil Kerlikowske. Kerlikowske became top cop in 2000 and since then has embraced harm reduction projects, including needle exchange, methadone vans, and drug courts, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Notably, under Kerlikowske, police have not engaged in raids or arrests of medi-pot patients or growers. (Washington enacted its medi-pot law in 1998.) Kerlikowske's approach to medical marijuana -- which ACLU Drug Policy Director Alison Holcomb said "demonstrated compassion" -- might be in part the reason he's Obama's pick. The new president has caught some flack in recent days for allowing the medi-pot raids by the Drug Enforcement Administration to continue after he said on the campaign trail that he does not support such actions. The nomination of Kerlikowske might be a first step toward fulfilling that campaign promise. Also on Kerlikowske's resume, according to the PI: Although he initially did not support a city initiative making pot-law enforcement a lowest law enforcement priority, the chief has since embraced the measure, ordering officers to comply with its provisions. More on Kerlikowske here.

Speaker Joe Straus has (finally) announced his House Committee appointments. The full list can be found here. Quick hit points:
– Craig Eiland, D-Galveston, replaces Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, as speaker pro tem
– Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton, gets to chair the newly beefed-up State Affairs As for the Travis County Democrats:
– Dawnna Dukes keeps her powerful Appropriations seat
– Donna Howard becomes vice-chair of Culture, Recreation and Tourism
– Mark Strama gets the chairmanship of the new Technology, Economic Development and Workforce committee.
– Eddie Rodriguez joins him there and also sits on Public Safety
– Elliott Naishtat becomes vice-chair of Public Health
– Valinda Bolton gets seats on County Affairs, and Land Resource and Management (a top issue for her.) Check back for more analysis later.

Remember the titty tax? While the old bill is still caught up in the courts, legislators are trying for a third bite of the cherry (pardon the pun) on getting it to work. In 2005, an attempt to amend House Bill 3 to include a $4 admission charge on sexually oriented businesses died in its tracks. Then last session House Bill 1751, authored last session by freshman Rep. Ellen Cohen, D-Houston, introduced a $5 surcharge on sexually oriented businesses where alcohol was available: But Judge Scott Jenkins of the 53rd District Court threw that out last March as an unconstitutional tax on content. Yesterday, the attorney general dragged the issue before the Third Court of Appeals. But guess what? Turns out that Cohen and the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault are working on a new version of the tax which TAASA claims fixes all the holes. As for the fact that HB 1751 was so broadly written that it swept up everything from strip joints to contemporary dance, "It was never our intention to tax traditional theatre," said TAASA Executive Director Torie Camp, "and we'll be working with counsel to ensure that [they] are not taxed."

Former presidents of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico on Wednesday called on the U.S. to start treating drug use as a public health problem, to open up a dialog about drug policy, and to decriminalize the use of marijuana. The three presidents -- Cesar Gaviria of Colombia, Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico -- are among the 17 members of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy. During a press conference Feb. 11, coinciding with the release of a new commission report, Cardoso said that all "available evidence indicates that the War on Drugs is a failed war," and that, worldwide, drug policy needs to "move to a new paradigm." That won't happen, however, unless the U.S. breaks the "taboo" that keeps lawmakers from talking about alternative drug control strategies. Drug trafficking is driven largely by demand in the U.S., the officials said, and yet U.S. officials refuse to listen to the rest of the world -- and in particular Latin America -- about ways to deal with the drug "problem" and to lower demand. And because the U.S. puts so much pressure on the rest of the world to handle drug policy the way the U.S. wants it handled, Gaviria noted, all debate is stifled.