Lots in letters over the Labor Day weekend: Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, medical marijuana, the plight of the gay Republican, India's kids...and cows.

Catherine McCallum, of Monrovia, responds Saturday to the Paul Roberts op-ed "The cost of steak."  Higher prices for meat, she argues, would only benefit American consumers:

[Roberts] expresses concern about the rising meat prices that will accompany the return to more traditional methods of raising meat animals, but he neglects to mention the benefit: with higher prices, people will eat less meat.

...I say, let those prices soar and pass the hummus. We'll all be better off.

And on Sunday, Los Angeles' Allan Hatch can't resist riffing on the discovery that cows, like compasses, point north:

Did the scientists ever consider that the cows may lay down facing north because they don't want the sun in their eyes?  If they did the study below the equator, would the cows be facing south?

*Photo: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images