Opinion: The Letters top five: Palin wins, again

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It’s no big surprise that letters commenting on Sarah Palin once again dominated our inbox last week. But barring new bombshells, reaction to the vice-presidential nominee appears to be tapering off.

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 572 usable letters, 332 of which were in our Top Five Topics:

Sarah Palin: 151 letters, still the most of any subject, but nothing like last week when she generated 71% of our mail;

Other presidential election: 86 letters, including responses to The Times’ Republican National Convention coverage;

California’s budget, or lack thereof: 35 letters, including responses to columns by George Skelton and this Op-Ed by Joe Mathews;

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: 33 letters;

Refusing medical treatment: 27 letters, reacting to an Op-Ed by Crispin Sartwell arguing that doctors should be able to refuse medical treatment to patients on moral or religious grounds.