WELL, THAT’S A STRETCH: Democrats Say Cohen Plea Impeaches Kavanaugh Pick.

NEWS YOU CAN USE? Here’s Your Updated Guide To Superhero And Supervillains’ Religious Affiliations.

JAMES BOND: “Yesterday, it was announced that the British sports car maker will produce 25 brand-new ‘continuation’ DB5s as a tribute to the Aston featured in the 1964 Bond film Goldfinger. The 25 cars will be faithful reproductions of the car in the film, so they’ll all be silver, and Aston has said its working with Chris Corbould, the special effects supervisor for the James Bond films, to give the cars working gadgets.”

AT AMAZON, Education Supplies for Teachers & Homeschoolers.

Plus, Shop Amazon Warehouse Deals – Deep Discounts on Open-box and Used Products.

STEVE BANNON: Manafort Verdict, Cohen Plea Mean ‘November Is a Referendum on Impeachment.’

TOM COTTON AND HUGH HEWITT DISCUSS “JAILBREAK LEGISLATION”:  Via Powerline.

BUT GUN CONTROL! Three injured outside Tube station in SECOND shooting in a NIGHT. “LONDON’S horrific crimewave continued last night as three people were injured in a shooting outside a Tube station in the capital.”

CYBORGIZATION SAVES LIVES: Nerve stimulator may help depressed patients regain some life.

I had some thoughts on this a while back, based on my being married to a cyborg. You know what they say: Once you’ve gone metal, you’ll never settle.

BET YOU’VE HEARD NOTHING TILL NOW ABOUT THESE ILLEGAL ALIEN CRIMES: Not all illegal immigrants coming into this country commit heinous crimes, to be sure, but every one of them that does represents a preventable tragedy. Mainstream media avoid reporting such crimes like the plague. If you lived near these five crime scenes, would you want to know about them?

YIKES: PHOTO SHOWS ASIA ARGENTO IN BED WITH UNDERAGED ACCUSER, TEXTS SHOW HER ADMITTING TO SEX.

UGH: Saudi Arabia ‘seeks death penalty’ for female activist.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement on Tuesday the charges against the activists “do not resemble recogniseable crimes” and include “incitement to protest”, “chanting slogans hostile to the regime” and “providing moral support to rioters”.

Authorities have held the five activists, along with another not facing the death penalty, in pretrial detention without legal representation for more than two years.

They are due to appear in court again on October 28, according to HRW.

“Any execution is appalling, but seeking the death penalty for activists like Israa al-Ghomgham, who are not even accused of violent behaviour, is monstrous,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW.

Crown Prince bin Salman could take a couple more of those baby steps towards modernity about now.

FASTER, PLEASE: Gut enzyme could help solve U.S. blood shortages. “An enzyme found in gut bacteria could convert type A blood into universal type O blood, a scientific feat that would significantly boost blood supplies, a new study suggests. This enzyme converts A blood into O blood approximately 30 times faster than any enzyme on record, and it appears to do it in a safe and effective manner, said lead researcher Stephen Withers, a professor of biochemistry with the University of British Columbia.”

MARK LEVIN: “Mr. Lanny Davis had his client plead guilty to two offenses that aren’t offenses.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Identify Racist And Sexist Remarks And Slurs.

NEWS YOU COULD PROBABLY USE: Google Assistant’s latest feature delivers just the ‘good news.’

To activate the feature, Assistant users in the U.S. can say, “Hey Google, tell me something good” to kick off the daily briefing of happy stories.

Google offers some examples of what the “good news” may include, like a story about how Georgia State University stopped students from slipping through the cracks; or how backyard beekeepers in East Detroit are bringing back the dwindling bee population; or how Iceland curbed teen drinking.

The stories are selected and summarized by the nonpartisan nonprofit Solutions Journalism Network, an organization that helps train journalists to better cover how people are responding to problems and how those actions can have positive results.

I get the feeling there’s going to be a wide gap between Google’s definition of good news and my own.

JOE PAPPALARDO: Stratolaunch Has a New Spaceplane, and It’s Designed With Humans in Mind.

PROFILES IN COURAGE: Texas School Removes ‘Ladies’ and ‘Gentlemen’ Quote After Single Twitter User Complains.

J.D. TUCCILLE: Dear Democrats and Republicans, Please Keep Tearing Down Your Government: Respect for the overall government is waning. Good.

LATE STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s economy in complete collapse — and the mother of all human waves outward begins. “It’s as if the Maduro regime is at war with economics itself: the regime doesn’t like what the economic forces are telling it about its bad socialist decisions, so it shuts down the economy altogether, and that’s the solution.”

No word yet if America’s New Socialist “It Girl” has read this column.

JAMES S. ROBBINS IN USA TODAY: Social media companies are the real ‘enemies of the people:’ Social media has coarsened public discourse, silenced conservative voices and lowered the quality of journalism. We must do something about it.

Related: Social Media As Social Disease.

GOOD GRIEF: Judge Gives No Jail Time To Imran Awan, Attorney Claims He Was Building ‘Women’s Shelter.’

A federal judge declined to give jail time to former Democratic IT aide Imran Awan Tuesday, saying he has “suffered enough” at the hands of politicians “at the highest levels of government.” In addition, the Department of Justice said it did not find any evidence that supported criminal charges.

Imran choked back tears, saying, “We want to thank the prosecution, the FBI and the Capitol Police,” while his lawyer submitted a letter referring to President Donald Trump, Sen. Chuck Grassley and other Republications as “deranged,” “pathetic” and “without a shred of decency.”

Judge Tanya Chutkin gave Imran three months of supervised release. Imran’s attorney had hoped to avoid the supervision, indicating Imran wanted to go back to Pakistan: “By ending this today, you will allow Hina to build her family wherever she chooses and allow Imran to visit his father’s grave and secure his legacy,” the attorney said.

The lawyer, former Hillary Clinton aide Chris Gowen, said Imran was motivated by love for his father, who was dying in Virginia when Imran flew to Pakistan. Imran, he said, was in a “panic” to get money to urgently build a charity hospital, described in court as a “women’s shelter.” He described the urgent moves as “securing his father’s legacy.”

The story is at odds with a 2009 Pakistani newspaper article, police reports and lawsuits in Pakistan, as well as interviews.

Outrageous.

PRESIDENT IN A VISE:

What needs to be kept in mind at every stage is that this whole investigation is not about Russian meddling. Everyone agrees that they did it and it was wrong. No one needs a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of that. This is part of an effort by the Democrats and their collaborators to overturn a presidential election that they thought they would win. No crime of which either man was pronounced guilty today is as foul as the campaign underway to foil the decision of the American people.

Read the whole thing.

#METOO UPDATE: “Asia Argento says she did not have sex with then 17-year-old Jimmy Bennett, but a photo and various text messages between Argento and a friend tell a very different story … she flat-out says she had sex with him.”

SO WE AREN’T THERE YET, but we may reach a point at which the question has to be asked: Trump or Pence? It’s not Trump or Hillary as it was in 2016. The alternative to Trump now is Pence.

In 1998, the Dems could have gotten Bill Clinton to step down, or joined in impeaching him. That would have left them with President Al Gore, who would have almost certainly been re-elected in 2000. Though given Clinton’s enormous ego and belief in his own political prowess, talking him into resigning would have been hard.

It’s not 1998 for the Republicans yet, and what happens in the midterms will probably determine whether it is. Of course, Trump would be harder than Clinton to talk into resigning, I suspect, for similar reasons.

But Democrats also have to ask themselves, do they want President Pence? Because that’s what you get if you manage to get rid of Trump.

THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD: First World War brought to life in 3D color by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson.