Opinion: The Letters Top Five

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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 usually are left with several hundred eligible items, from which we select the somewhere around 100 that get published in the newspaper.

Last week we received 964 usable letters, 204 of which were in our Top Five Topics:

• The bailout: 453 letters, reacting to the back-and-forth between the Treasury Secretary, the House, and the Senate;
• The presidential election: 133 letters, responding to stories about John McCain, Barack Obama, and the first presidential debate;
• Sarah Palin: 80 letters;
• California’s ballot propositions: 61 letters, mostly from readers taking issue with the editorial board’s endorsements;
• Height of arrogance: 27 letters, reacting to this editorial about the Bush administration’s modus operandum for expanding executive power.