Each week, your letters maven 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 she cuts 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,) she is usually left with several hundred eligible items, from which she selects the somewhere around 100 that get published in the newspaper.

Last week The Times received 777 usable letters, 628 of which were in our Top Five Topics:

• Presidential election: 408 letters, responding to Times stories about the final presidential debate, the polarized electorate and more (most Joe the Plumber letters will go in next week's tally);
• Gay marriage: 87 letters;
• Economy: 80 letters, as stock market gyrations continued;
• "Religulous" and atheism: 33 letters, reacting to this Op-Ed and this Gregory Rodriguez column about Bill Maher's documentary "Religulous" and atheists; and
• Rail safety and funding: 20 letters, reacting to this Op-Ed calling for the end of Metrolink and other Times stories about rail transport and mass transit. 

Drop that pencil! Before you fill out your absentee ballot, you should know about what's in Saturday's pages--a handy election recap that provides you with a quick, user-friendly guide to the major issues, state and in L.A. county, city and school district, on the November ballot. You'll get the Times editorial board's recommendations on how to vote, and why. Confused by the two alt-energy propositions? Wondering about the gamut of bonds, state and local? All will be made crystal clear, sort of. And if you prefer voting the old-fashioned way, this is a great editorial to clip and store in your wallet for your date with the voting booth.

Today's editorial page leads you to that recap with the last two endorsements on L.A. ballot measures. The editorial board registered a regretful No on Measure A, the tax to fund gang-diversion programs. Much as the money is needed, the city has yet to operate and effectively evaluate gang-diversion programs. Once we know the money will actually keep kids out of gangs, the board argues, it will be time to pass the tax. In contrast, the board gives thumbs-up to Measure B ...

The Times' editorial board threw its support behind Measure R today, which would add a half a percentage point to the sales tax in Los Angeles County to pay for mass-transit and road projects. What do you think? With the economy teetering, is now the time to raise taxes on consumer spending?

The entire editorial:

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.

Hard to believe, but the most controversial thing coming out of the Opinion Manufacturing Division today isn't writer John Kenney's giddy riff on Sarah Palin. Inspired by her deer-in-the-headlights response when asked about the Bush doctrine by ABC's Charles Gibson, Kenney imagines how he might have tried to bluff his way out of the jam. Even Palin partisans should find it chuckleworthy, assuming it's possible to be a partisan and have a sense of humor. That's an open question, given the behavior on both sides of the political divide.

No, the piece most likely to send readers hair on fire is the editorial lamenting a recent California appeals court ruling that the University of California system violated federal law by giving in-state tuition discounts to illegal immigrants. The board doesn't quibble with the ruling on legal grounds -- the federal prohibition against states providing educational preferences to illegals is pretty clear. But in the board's view, denying discounted tuition to the children of undocumented California residents is bad policy:

Studies show that investing in education for immigrants pays off. Assuming they remain in California, their economic contributions more than make up for the cost of subsidized college tuition within a few years. Forcing them to wallow in permanent poverty, by contrast, is a drain on taxpayers -- as well as being flat-out immoral.

Also in the editorial stack, the board endorses a Virginia Supreme Court ruling that protected spam from political parties, churches and other non-commercial sources -- another popular stance! -- and it backs a Bush administration proposal to let the Federal Railroad Administration limit the hours worked by train engineers:

Yes, it will cost more money to hire workers for both the morning and evening rush hours, and those costs will be passed on to passengers. Perhaps, as Metrolink executives have predicted in the past, that will reduce ridership -- but not nearly as much as a perception that trains are dangerous and that Metrolink is doing nothing to make them safer.

Elsewhere on the Op-Ed page, Kelly Candaele, a trustee of the Los Angeles City Employees' Retirement System, calls for more regulation of the exotic financial instruments that helped create the current crisis on Wall Street. And former U.S. Reps. Paul Findley (R-Ill.) and Don Fraser (D-Minn.) urge Congress not to heed the call by two former secretaries of state, James Baker and Warren Christopher, to scrap the War Powers Act:

The proposed legislation has loopholes big enough to allow major military operations by the president alone.

Among these loopholes we find that "limited acts of reprisal against terrorists or states that sponsor terrorism" are exempt from reference to Congress. But who identifies "terrorists"? Who defines "terrorism"? Who determines which are "states that sponsor terrorism"? Who defines "limited"? The president alone. Congress is consigned to the role of an uninformed, unconsulted bystander.

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 662 usable letters, 463 of which were in our Top Five Topics:

Sarah Palin: 177 letters. Palin leads the pack for the third week in a row, but her margin of victory is narrowing;

The Metrolink disaster: 137 letters, including responses to general coverage and to this story about former Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell;

Other presidential election: 80 letters responding to articles about John McCain, Barack Obama and the campaign;

The economy: 36 letters, mostly focused on the government's bailout of AIG (and its non-bailout of Lehman Brothers);

and

Arts education: 33 letters, reacting to this editorial about a Rand Corp. study on education and the arts.

The crisis on Wall Street draws ink today from the Times editorial board and two Op-Ed writers. The board laments how taxpayers have become the lender of last resort for major financial firms such as American International Group, and calls on the government to develop better tools to guard against the need for future bailouts. Author Frances Dinkelspiel sends a good-bye kiss to Lehman Bros., thanking the bankrupt investment bank for providing critical infusions of capital to Los Angeles banks in the late 19th century. And columnist Rosa Brooks, penning a fictitious letter to the United States from leaders of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, blames "irresponsible deregulation" for simultaneous crises in energy, housing, credit and the stock market:

We thus want to acknowledge the progress you have made in your evolution from economic superpower to economic basket case. Normally, such a process might take 100 years or more. With your oscillation between free-market extremism and nationalization of private companies, however, you have successfully achieved, in a few short years, many of the key hallmarks of Third World economies.

The editorial board also praises a federal judge's rejection of a Bush administration plan to allow more snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park. And it expresses hope that the cultural issues that played a big role in past presidential elections will take a back seat to debates over the economy, war, nuclear proliferation, energy, Russia climate change and health care:

Decades of arguing about abortion, an issue that turns on matters of personal faith, have produced only tiny shifts in policy. Can we talk about something else this time?

Also on the Op-Ed page, author Peter Schrag lays out the rationale behind California's requirement that budgets be approved by a two-thirds vote. Then he explains how the requirement became the bane of the legislature, and why it's not likely to change. Columnist Patt Morrison rallies to the defense of Denise Tyrrell, the beleaguered Metrolink spokeswoman who swiftly acknowledged that an error by a Metrolink engineer caused the horrific crash in Chatsworth last Friday:

We've slid a long way in the 64 years since Dwight D. Eisenhower, commanding the D-day forces, penciled a note in case the invasion failed: "If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone." What leader would admit such a thing today? Or maybe he'd save it for his book deal.

And cartoonist Lisa Benson in the Washington Post gives her spin on celebrity politics:

A disaster like the Metrolink crash was bound to mean calls for change. All well and good; this editorial board took the opportunity to grouse that it's taking too long for the federal government to require--and help fund--high-tech safety backups for rail. But L.A. County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich has far more lavish plans in store. He got the board to approve his motion pushing for more grade separations, straightening of tracks--both of those particularly expensive fixes--plus double tracking, improved signals and so forth.

Interesting, because Antonovich is also one of the leading voices against Measure R, the proposal to raise the sales tax by a half cent for road and transit projects in the county. So how to pay for all this? By sending a letter to the county's legislators in Sacramento (a place not notably loaded with dough these days) as well as the federal delegation. Taxes are OK, I guess, as long as someone else pays them.