Each week, Letters to the Editor receives thousands of e-mails, dozens of letters through the good old U.S. postal service, and even a few faxes here and there.

After we cut out spam, obscene mail, letters addressed to more than one recipient, letters that seem to be the fruit of letter-writing campaigns and letters with attachments (which gum up our computer systems), we are left usually with several hundred eligible items, from which we select the somewhere around 100 that get published in the newspaper.

Last week was a busy one.  Thanks to the bailout and the presidential campaign, we received 1602 usable letters, 1258 of which were in our Top Five Topics:

The bailout: 680 letters, many dismayed by the size of the proposed $700 billion rescue for Wall Street;

Gay marriage: 220 letters, responding to this Op-Ed by David Blankenhorn;

Presidential election: 181 letters responding to articles about John McCain, Barack Obama and the campaign;

Sarah Palin: a respectable 117 letters (but not enough to maintain the vice presidential candidate's three-week domination over the Letters Top Five); and

Metrolink: 60 letters, reacting to Times coverage of the Sept. 12 rail crash in Chatsworth.