Dan Gilgoff offers some excerpts where Palin talks about her faith:

And I do know there is a God. My life is in His hands. I encourage readers to do what I did many years ago, invite Him in to take over . . . then see what He will do and how He will get you through. Test Him on this. You'll see there's no such thing as coincidence. I'm thankful for His majestic creation called Alaska.

She also talks about putting your life in God's hands in an interview with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Sarah Palin: "My very last paragraph there sums it up and invites people, encourages people to do what I did and that's put their life in God's hands, our Creator who knows probably better than we know what the perfect path is for a person so God being so extremely important my faith is to my life I wasn't going to be hesitant at all to let people know what I believe."

Sarah Palin: "How in the World would I sum up my life except to say God at the end of the day I have really nothing but my faith, my reliance on you lord and I wanted to articulate that."

She talks about her faith in God here, but there's little mention of Jesus. If you've read Palin's book, what did you think?

Some pro-choice critics of the amendment say that it goes far beyond previous limits placed on federal funding of abortions, diminishing the legal standing of abortion based on Roe v. Wade. Pro-choice advocates are determined to stop the bill from passing the Senate with the amendment attached. Tuesday, the pro-choice Center for Reproductive Rights launched a new ad aimed at warning viewers that Congress could “ban abortion coverage millions of women already have.”

The Conference of Catholic Bishops is pushing back against pro-choice lobbyists in order to retain the amendment, denying in a recent assessment that the Stupak amendment would affect existing access to abortion because it only applies to the use of government money and not private insurance options. (The Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio also break down the terms of the amendment and agree that the affect of the amendment will be minimal.) The Los Angeles Times noted that the Catholic organization, which has been lobbying the federal government to provide universal health insurance for the past three decades, wielded significant influence in the addition of the amendment because the organization will not support a bill that covers abortion.

Before the final vote, the House also voted 240-194 to bar federal funding of abortion in the proposed government-run health care plan.

Sixty-four Democrats voted in favor of the amendment led by Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), while Republican Rep. John Shadegg voted present in an effort to derail the bill. Here's the full description of the Stupak amendment.

The amendment prohibits federal funds for abortion services in the public option. It also prohibits individuals who receive affordability credits from purchasing a plan that provides elective abortions. However, it allows individuals, both who receive affordability credits and who do not, to separately purchase with their own funds plans that cover elective abortions. It also clarifies that private plans may still offer elective abortions.

Here's analysis from the Associated Press:

Under the Stupak amendment, people who do not receive federal insurance subsidies could buy private insurance plans in the exchange that include abortion coverage. People who receive federal subsidies could buy separate policies covering only abortions if they use only their own money to do it.

Companies selling insurance policies covering abortions would be required to offer identical policies without the abortion coverage.

...A health overhaul bill pending in the Senate also bars federal funding for abortion, but the language is less stringent. Discrepancies between the House and Senate measures would have to be reconciled before any final bill is passed.

Koop's letter, addressed to Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, protested federal funding of abortion in health care legislation.

"More specifically, I am troubled about the possibility of federal dollars being used to pay for elective abortions and Americans being forced to subsidize them," Koop wrote. "I firmly believe that strong protections must be included in this legislation so that health care providers are not forced to participate in abortions against their will."

Roll Call reports that the letter was stampless with "C. Everett Koop" written in the upper-left corner, and staffers reported it as a suspicious package to the police.

Reached at his home Wednesday, Koop confirmed that he wrote a few “beautifully typed” pages on his views of the health care legislation. The fact that it caused a Capitol Hill scare is “nonsense,” he said.

“I wasn’t aware that sending a hand-delivered letter was an offense,” he said, later adding: “I did it over a weekend. I don’t have a lot of secretarial help and I’m 93.”

The Legislature passed the law in May, but the election offered voters the chance to repeal the measure.

With more than 84 percent of precincts reporting early Tuesday, voters seeking to repeal the law claimed 53 percent of the vote.

In Washington state, early election results showed that voters were approving the state’s “everything but marriage” law, which gives registered domestic partners additional state-granted rights currently given only to married couples.

He joins Virginia governor-elect Bob McConnell as the second Republican Catholic to be voted into gubernatorial office today.

The Associated Press reports that with 75 percent of the precincts reporting, Christie leads with 50 percent of the vote over his Democratic opponent Gov. Jon Corzine, who is left with 44 percent of the vote. President Obama invested in the race, campaigning with Corzine five times on three visits.

During the campaign, Corzine targeted Christie in an ad criticizing Christie's support of a constitutional ban on abortion and opposition of funding stem cell research.

Republican Bob McDonnell won Virginia's governor race today, becoming the second Catholic governor of Virginia, the Associated Press reports. Outgoing Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine became the first.

The former state attorney general defeated Democratic candidate, R. Creigh Deeds, who attempted to slam McDonnell for his 1989 master’s thesis while attending Regent University. McDonnell had described working women and feminists as "detrimental" to the family. Deeds's strategy didn't work, the Washington Post writes.

The strategy appeared to work for a time, as polls tightened. But McDonnell fought back with a series of TV spots featuring supportive testimonials from his daughter, an Army veteran who served in Iraq, and a gallery of professional women who had worked for him in the attorney general's office. Increasingly, voters said they saw Deeds's campaign as a largely negative one that failed to define his own vision for the state.

This is the first time voters have had a chance to repeal a legislature-initiated law that extends marriage to same-sex couples. If voters repeal it, the law will not be implemented.

The campaign to approve the law, Protect Maine Equality, and the campaign for repealing the law, Stand For Marriage Maine are still fighting hard as Election Day approaches to get the voters out. Protect Maine Equality raised $4 million for advertising and other campaign material, compared to $2.6 million raised by Stand for Marriage Maine, according to The New York Times. In addition, Gov. John Baldacci (D) publicly supports the law.

The final public opinion polls taken before the election suggest that the vote is a dead heat, the Washington Post reports.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to unveil a health care plan Thursday morning that could be up for a vote on the House floor next week.

Rep. Bart Stupak (D.-Michigan) said Speaker Pelosi is not pleased with his effort to remove abortion from being funded through healthcare reform. "I'm comfortable with where I'm at," he said on CSPAN. "This is who I am. It's reflective of my district. If it costs me my seat, so be it."

Christianity Today posted an article last week that outlined how the issue is dividing Democrats. Focus on the Family Action is spending $400,000 to fight President Obama's health care proposals, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.

Update: Stupak says in a video released today by the Heritage Foundation blog that he would probably still vote for the health care at the end of the day.

“I offered an amendment that says no public funding for abortion; that’s been the law of the land for many many decades, and we lose that vote. Let’s say we lose that vote–we need 218 to win–let’s say we get 217, and we lose. Would I vote against health care? If I had a chance to vote my conscience on it, I probably would not. I probably would still vote for the health care bill at the end of the day.”

A man in the audience voiced his concern before Stupak defended his position again.

"If everything I want [is] in the final bill, I like everything in the bill except you have public funding for abortion, and we had a chance to run our amendment and we lost. OK, I voted my conscience, stayed true to my principles, stayed true to the beliefs of this district, could I vote for healthcare? Yes I still could."

In other news:

--President Obama signed the hate crimes legislation "to help protect our citizens from violence based on what they look like, who they love, how they pray, or who they are."

The bill has frustrated several conservative Christian groups who feared that pastors would see repercussions from the law. The latest version of the bill included new language that explicitly protected an excused person’s free exercise of religion.

Scholars and activists have disagreed over whether a minister could be prosecuted, if he or she preached against homosexuality and a parishioner would later commit a hate crime against someone for being gay.

"I want to get this off my chest," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is continuing to head up work on a health care plan this week. "We're trying to move forward to do something to take care of Medicaid. There are dozens of things they've held us up on and they're doing that because they're betting on our failure."

Reid was joined by senators including Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Ben Cardin (Maryland) and Bob Casey (Penn.).

Failure to reform health care will create a heavier burden for the faith community to care for the poor, sick and elderly, said Sen. Ben Cardin.

"The faith community is being called upon to provide more resources and do more things that should be in our system collectively," Cardin said.

But while The Green Bible highlights earth-friendly passages in green, The Tennessean finds that the Conservative Bible Project takes translation to a new level, taking out two sections.

One is the long ending of Mark's Gospel, which includes verses about snake handling and the story of the woman caught in adultery. Neither is found in most of the oldest Greek manuscripts used to translate the Bible. Schlafly says that adultery story, in which Jesus says, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her," should be cut because it portrays Jesus as being soft on sin.

"It's a liberal addition, put in by people who wanted to undermine the reality of hell and judgment," he said.

The story of the woman caught in adultery, known as the "Pericope Adulterae" and found in John 7:53-8:1, has troubled scholars for some time. Most Greek manuscripts have the story but not the oldest manuscripts. St. Jerome included it in his Greek New Testament, which was used as the basis for the King James Version of the Bible. Modern translators put a footnote or bracket around the story, pointing out the questions about its origins. But none removed the text.

Meanwhile, Stephen Colbert and Salon take a few jabs at the project. Colbert's fans inserted "In the beginning, Stephen Colbert created the heaven and the earth," which was edited back out.

And even though former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s forthcoming autobiography has topped Amazon book charts for weeks, she trails (18 percent) Huckabee (29 percent) and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (24 percent). In July, voters placed Romney (25 percent) and Palin (24 percent) in a close tie while Huckabee finished a close third at 22 percent.

This time around among evangelicals, Huckabee leads Palin by 17 percent while Palin beats Romney by 14 percent.

In other news:

Deeds took the thesis and ran with it, using it to paint McDonnell as a "social crusader" during last night's debate and in at least four different TV ads. One ad features six women who question McDonnell's voting record. "What did this thesis say about women?" another ads asks. "A lot ... abortion should be outlawed and birth control should be restricted--even for married adults."

McDonnell responded with two ads. One features women who worked with him while he was state Attorney General, while the other is narrated by his daughter, Jeanine, who served as a platoon leader in Iraq. McDonnell, who is Catholic, has five children.

Another ad is being aired by the Virginia Values Voter PAC, tied to the Family Research Council; this one accuses Deeds of flip-flopping on the issues of same-sex marriage and partial-birth abortion.

President Obama, who has promised his approval, also renewed his pledge to end the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy while speaking to the nation's largest gay advocacy group Saturday night.

The flurry of gay rights activity in Washington last week started with a decision by the D.C. City Council to consider allowing gay marriage in the district. If approved, Washington will become the first city below the Mason-Dixon line to allow gay marriage.