By Brent Johnson

It has become accepted as a necessary function of our government: Homeland Security. The massive Department of Homeland Security, created by an Act of Congress, has already attracted countless lobbyists, all vying for billions of dollars in DHS appropriations. (By the way, did you know that Homeland Security was supposed to cost nothing; it was supposed to simply be a reorganization of already existing budgets? So much for government promises).

CLARKSTON, Michigan (PNN) - August 4, 2013 - Kid Rock has warned would-be intruders that he will not hesitate to open fire on them, after a man was spotted trying to gain access to his home.

After a man on crutches was seen trying to gain entry to the musician's home in Clarkston, Michigan, Kid Rock took to his blog to warn anyone else from trying to break in.

INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana (PNN) - August 2, 2013 - Professor Margaret Hu’s important new article, Biometric ID Cybersurveillance (Indiana Law Journal), carefully and chillingly lays out federal and state government’s increasing use of biometrics for identification and other purposes. These efforts are poised to lead to a national biometric ID with centralized databases of our iris, face, and fingerprints. Such multimodal biometric IDs ostensibly provide greater security from fraud than our current de facto identifier, the social security number. As Professor Hu lays out, biometrics are, and soon will be, gatekeepers to the right to vote, work, fly, drive, and cross into our borders.

WASHINGTON (PNN) - August 6, 2013 - For years, sources within the alternative media have been predicting that eventually there will be a massive roll out of Amerikan Gestapo Transportation Security Administration division VIPR teams that will patrol local neighborhoods, transit areas, and high profile events. The implementation of this militarized terrorist pig thug cop collaborator force has happened very slowly, over the course of a decade, so the general population has yet to catch on, and mainstream media has been able to completely ignore this situation. That is, until now.

STERLING HEIGHTS, Michigan (PNN) - August 5, 2013 - I hereby resign in protest effective immediately.

I have served the post-911 Military Industrial complex for 10 years, first as a soldier in Baghdad, and now as a defense contractor.

At the time of my enlistment I believed in the cause. I was ignorant, naïve and misled. The narrative - professed by the state and echoed by mainstream press - has proven false and criminal. We have become what I thought we were fighting against.

MARIETTA, Georgia (PNN) - August 4, 2013 - As guest speaker at the Marietta-based Georgia Tea Party on Thursday, Oleg Ivutin of Smyrna warned of growing similarities between the Fascist Police States of Amerika and the former Soviet Union where he grew up.

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (PNN) - August 3, 2013 - Uruguay is set to become the first country to legalize marijuana use, cultivation and possession following a century of often authoritarian prohibition laws across the globe. In a landmark vote on President José Mujica’s recent proposal, the Uruguayan Congress overwhelmingly voted in favor of legislation and it is expected that the bill will pass through the Uruguayan Senate in the next few weeks.

July 30, 2013 - I was downtown last Thursday and ended up with an hour to kill before my train home, so I went down the station’s back stairs and around the corner to Jay’s Bar. It was almost six o’clock, so the crowd was a mix of corporate suits buying expensive vodka, tradesmen enjoying decent beer, and jobless neighborhood guys drinking cheap beer. I ordered something inoffensive and watched to see if any of my old cypherpunk pals would show up.

SAN FRANCISCO, Kalifornia (PNN) - July 15, 2013 - Pediatricians may soon get help monitoring babies' health with a high-tech diaper.

A new startup, called Smart Diapers, uses a QR code on a baby's diaper and parents' smart phones to record health data that would normally be thrown in the trash.

LONDON, England (PNN) - July 17, 2013 - Scientists have developed an "intelligent knife" that can tell surgeons immediately whether the tissue they are cutting is cancerous or not.

In the first study to test the invention in the operating theater, the "iKnife" diagnosed tissue samples from 91 patients with 100% accuracy, instantly providing information that normally takes up to half an hour to reveal using laboratory tests.