UPDATE: A man with access to the Ellie Light e-mail account says yes, it's him.

On Thursday evening, The Plain Dealer's Sabrina Eaton reported on "Ellie Light," who'd had virtually identical letters to the editor published in newspapers around the country, with most of them claiming a different hometown in each paper's circulation area.

, saying "There was lots to write about this week, for example Teddy Kennedy' seat falling to a Republican, or the Supreme Court's ruling allowing corporations to donate unlimited funds to causes they support. Both those events portend unimaginable consequences for democracy in this country. And Ms. Eaton, a "Washington" journalist, decides to spend a few minutes pasting snippets of letters into Google and come up with a story about a letter writer."

Since then, others have followed the trail of the Ellie Light letter. The blog Patterico's Pontifications seems to have the most comprehensive list so far. To the dozen or so originall listed, the blog adds several dozen more, including the Stamford (Conn.) Advocate and the Gainesville (Ga.) Times. The letter has even appeared overseas, including in the Bangkok Post. And now there's a Facebook fan page for her.

In most letters, Light claims a nearby hometown. But in letters published in two papers that have a broader audience -- the Washington Times and USA Today -- her address is listed as Long Beach, Calif. That's the same city used in a letter to the Daily Breeze in California.

(Monday update: One of the papers that appeared to have published the letter, the Green Bay (Wis.) Press-Gazette, posted a statement on its site. It said that the letter was actually printed in sister papers, but appear under the Press-Gazette logo online as well because of the structure of their operation. And it said, speaking for the other papers, "The editors of the [Gannett Wisconsin Media}] papers exercised due diligence to one degree or another, in most cases calling the phone number provided by the writer to confirm she was the author. However, she responded with false information and a series of different hometowns.")

Commenters have questioned the coincidence of so many papers deciding to publish this one letter out of all those they've received. However, most of the letters have appeared in smaller papers, where competition for published letters is not as high. And Politico.com's Ben Smith, who in an unusual decision had published the Ellie Light letter in ful himself, wrote at the time that her words " seemed to crystallize a point his supporters have been trying to make for a while."

Here's what Ellie Light wrote:

Video: Andrew Breitbart discusses Ellie Light.

Video: Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin discuss Ellie Light