We often get letters sent to us that are part of a letter-writing campaign – it is up to us to weigh the merits of these letters (Are they too repetitious? Is the subject matter worthy?), but one type that we give no leeway to is the obvious form letter or circulating petition. A more-blatant-than-usual example arrived in our mailbox this morning (reproduced below in its entirety, minus the letter-writer’s ID):

To all citizens: please copy/paste my letter to George W. Bush, below, remove my name then sign your name at the bottom, and send it on to our president. It’s disgraceful that these two U.S. Border Agents will remain in jail for 12 years while the Mexican drug smuggler they captured walks free. Ck story out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacio_Ramos
(thanks to Shavana Abruzzo, Courier Life columnist).
Bush’s email address is president@whitehouse.gov

To: President George W. Bush,
As a citizen of the United States I am outraged to learn that two U.S. Border Agents, Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos, have been convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms for doing their jobs—pursuing illegal aliens who cross our border. I am calling on you to officially pardon these men for their actions.
I am even more outraged to learn that this illegal alien (who was attempting to smuggle about 800 pounds of marijuana into our country), was tracked down by a Department of Homeland Security Investigator and granted immunity for his testimony against these two agents!
This is a terrible injustice, and I urge you to use your considerable authority and power to pardon these two agents and right this obvious wrong!

Now this one wasn’t meant to be sent to newspapers per se, but at least one letter-writer thought this was worthy of publication. Needless to say, it won’t see the light of day our newspaper. Future posts will explore the not-so-cut-and-dried examples of letter-writing campaigns and how we decide what gets published.