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US online retail giant Amazon said Sunday it plans to produce 16 feature films a year, throwing down the gauntlet to Netflix, whose African war drama "Beasts of No Nation" may be headed for Oscar glory in February. "We want to win an Oscar," Amazon boss Jeff Bezos told Sunday's edition of the German daily Die Welt. With its Prime subscription service, Amazon has invested heavily in boosting its video content, and like Netflix has gone into original production, both in TV series and now in cinema. Amazon won five Emmys for the TV comedy series "Transparent" this year. The...

WNYC's "On The Media" has a great series called the "Breaking News Consumer's Handbook," and as part of our ongoing partnership with them, we put together a handy list of rules for interpreting election polls. Listen to the whole episode, or just to my dulcet tones: But I also wanted to add a few notes on each rule. Here we go: 1. Wait. Shrug off polls until just before primaries, or until after the conventions for the general election. Even within a week of a primary election, the polls are often inaccurate. The polls more than a month out are,...

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — Minutes after taking a photo with Santa Claus and wishing him well on Christmas Eve, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz turned Grinch on Republicans on Capitol Hill who backed the omnibus spending bill that cleared earlier Friday. "Now, it's Christmastime, so it was Republican leadership playing Santa Claus to the lobbyists and K Street and the special interests, and it's why people are fed up with the Washington cartel," the Texas Republican told reporters before a packed house at the Life Church in suburban Richmond. "You know, just this week Senator Chuck Schumer was very candid about what...

Three days after the terrorist attack in which 14 people were killed at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California, a crowd of 1,500 Republican faithful streamed into the sunny lobby of Cedar Rapids' U.S. Cellular Center, passed through metal detectors, and took their seats for a four-hour oratory marathon by four presidential candidates, ostensibly focused on economic issues. But people's minds seemed elsewhere -- flags, as you drove through the city, waved at half-staff, and murmurs about homegrown terror were amplifying quickly. He wasn't in attendance that day in Iowa, and it would be two more days before he...

Mecosta County District Court Judge Peter Jaklevic is a former career prosecutor, like all righteous judges, and knows the purpose of jurors: to convict like they're told. So when Keith Wood — a wild-eyed former pastor and current lawless anarchist — began distributing seditious incitement to destroy the judicial system, Judge Peter Jaklevic knew just what to do: arrest him. " A 39-year-old former pastor was arrested and jailed in Mecosta County after he handed out fliers informing people about jury nullification in front of the county courthouse. " Keith Wood said he was handing out pamphlets from the Fully...

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli Arab who served a 15-year sentence in Egypt for espionage was released Thursday and welcomed back by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ouda Tarabin, a Bedouin Arab, crossed into Egypt illegally in 2000 and was convicted of spying for Israel. He maintained his innocence over the years. Egypt released Tarabin after he served his full sentence. "I feel like I'm dreaming," Tarabin said, referring to his incarceration as "when I was in a cemetery in Egypt." Netanyahu said the 34-year-old could now start his life over. The prime minister's office said Israel released two Egyptian...

Facing accusations from Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida that he's supported weakening surveillance powers, presidential rival and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas hit back against his rival on Thursday. The two Republican presidential candidates have been at each other over their differing views on reauthorization of provisions of the Patriot Act. The provisions in question involve the bulk collection of telephone metadata by the National Security Agency. Rubio is in a contingent led by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., that is blasting people who supported ending the bulk collection, claiming the practice is key to fighting terrorist threats. But Cruz, who...

As the Republican candidates prepare to meet in their fifth cable news debate, they've also been participating in what might be considered a year-long, slow-motion debate on the broadcast TV morning news shows. An MRC analysis of interviews from January 1 to December 4 finds the broadcast networks have pounded the candidates with a blizzard of hostile and left-wing questions. Most stunning when it came to policy questions, the networks hit the Republican candidates with ideologically liberal questions 85 percent of the time, compared to those based on a conservative agenda. An MRC study of the last GOP presidential race...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz offered an extended defense Thursday of his support for ending bulk data collection even as the threat of terrorism surges. In a lengthy policy speech at a conservative think tank, Cruz tried to rebut Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's forceful argument that Cruz's votes to end aspects of the National Security Agency's data collection program should raise red flags for voters concerned about national security. Cruz has tried to stake out a compromise position between the muscular interventionism of Rubio and the surveillance-skeptical libertarianism of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, both GOP presidential competitors. "There are some on...

A Republican U.S. senator who said earlier he opposed his party's House bill to repeal Obamacare's core provisions is now "strongly leaning" toward supporting the Senate version of the measure. Such a decision by Senator Mike Lee of Utah would increase the chances that the Republican-controlled Congress can send a partial repeal of the Affordable Care Act to President Barack Obama for the first time. The president has said he would veto legislation that would destroy much of his signature domestic achievement, and Democrats in Congress would be able to block an override. Lee in October joined two other Senate...

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said there is "no doubt" Planned Parenthood was caught "selling baby parts" and that as president, he would direct the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into the group on his first day in office. "They were certainly caught on film, that there is no doubt that they were selling baby parts. That is unambiguous," Mr. Cruz told radio host Hugh Hewitt this week. "The videos show senior Planned Parenthood officials selling the parts of unborn children, and it is a federal criminal offense. It's a felony to sell the body parts of...

Those of us who love the Christmas season -- I plead guilty! -- often are in the market for ways to make it more meaningful. I polled some friends and would like to share some of the results. Give more. Give yourself. Give the unexpected. Give ten times as much as they expect. Give more than ever before. Shop less. Buy fewer. Spend less. Stress less. Quit giving to the adults; give only to the children. Give no more than 3 presents per child. Emphasize the personal aspect. Write more notes. If you send Christmas cards, write personal notes on...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trump's support among Republicans has dropped 12 points in less than a week, marking the real estate mogul's biggest decline since he vaulted to the top of the field in July, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. Trump was the favorite of 31 percent of Republicans in a rolling poll in the five days ended on Nov. 27. That was down from a peak of 43 percent registered on Nov. 22. [snip} The five-day rolling average sample size ranged from 464 to 347 respondents between Nov. 22 and Nov. 27, with a credibility interval...

The Paris attacks have renewed debate on the U.S. government's post-Sept. 11 domestic surveillance laws, leading to efforts to revive the issue on Capitol Hill and handing Marco Rubio an opening against Ted Cruz in the Republican presidential race. The two senators were on opposite sides earlier this year when Congress eliminated the National Security Agency's bulk phone-records collection program and replaced it with a more restrictive measure to keep the records in phone companies' hands. Rubio, R-Fla., sided with top Republican senators in trying unsuccessfully to extend the existing program, saying that national security required it. Cruz, R-Texas, allied...

(CNN)Donald Trump is still the GOP front-runner in opinion polls, but Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has seen a surge on CNN's Political Prediction Market, and is now seen by players as more likely than the billionaire businessman to be the Republican nominee. Cruz's odds -- which stand at 21% -- are greater than Trump's 20% odds for the first time, according to the Political Prediction Market, a live, online game, conducted by the company Pivit for CNN. It uses polling data and input from its 25,000 users to predict outcomes. Movement on the Political Prediction Market has clearly been affected...

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz on Saturday said that the terrorist bloodbath in Paris underscored the failures of President Obama's anti-war stance and his timid foreign policy. "He may be tired of war, but our enemies are not tired of killing us and they are getting stronger," Mr. Cruz said on Fox News. He said the terrorist attacks in Paris Friday, which killed at least 129 people and wounded 352, was the latest example of how every conflict in the world has gotten worse under the foreign policy of Mr. Obama and former Secretary of...

- At least one suicide bomber had a ticket to the Stade de France last night - Reports claim an alert security guard prevented the killer from entering - The terrorist detonated his explosive vest before he could be arrested - Two of his comrades detonated their bombs over the next few minutes - See more of the latest news and updates on the Paris terror attacks A suicide bomber was turned away by a security guard as he tried to get into the Stade de France before blowing himself up after being challenged at the gate. The terrorist was...

Matt Abshire, 21, said he was woken up by the sound of gunshots when he looked out the window and saw a "college-aged kid dead on the road." Abshire said he followed the suspect west on Platte, who allegedly had multiple weapons including an assault-style rifle. That suspect then shot two other women who died a short time later, an officer with the Colorado Springs Police Department confirms with Denver7.

It would have been bad enough for Washington if Moscow had simply intervened in Syria and left it to the media to speculate and report on the progress made by Iranian ground troops operating under the cover of Russian airstrikes. But subtlety isn’t really Putin’s style and besides, the conflict in Syria represents a once in a lifetime opportunity to lay bare the West’s deplorable strategy of funding and arming extremists on the way to destabilizing recalcitrant regimes. ... We are of course not attempting to trivialize the death of Joshua Wheeler by writing this off as some kind of...

Yesterday morning in our article “Establishment Republicans Walking Away From Full Obamacare Repeal” we told you about the Capitol Hill Republican leadership’s plan to maintain key parts of Obamacare while it indulges in another show vote to claim it has repealed the hated health care takeover. Ted CruzYesterday afternoon principled limited government constitutional conservative Senator Ted Cruz joined us in demanding that Republican congressional leaders keep their promise to repeal Obamacare “root and branch” by passing a simple one sentence repeal through a process known as reconciliation. Senator Cruz tweeted, “It's not complicated: We promised the voters full repeal of...