Opinion: Letters Top Five

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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 955 usable letters, 736 of which were in our Top Five Topics:

• The debates: 307 letters, reacting to the Palin-Biden and McCain-Obama faceoffs. For the first week in a month, Sarah Palin did not receive her own category in the Top Five;
• Presidential election, other: 232 letters, many opining on the nasty tone of this year’s election season;
• Economy: 116 letters responding to what was arguably the biggest story of the week;
• Immigration: 49 letters, reacting to this story, this story, this editorial, and this editorial about immigration; and
• California government: 32 letters, mainly commenting on the state’s budget woes.