The U.S. government was turning down many allies’ offers of manpower, supplies and expertise worth untold millions of dollars. Eventually the United States also would fail to collect most of the unprecedented outpouring of international cash assistance for Katrina’s victims.

Allies offered $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash. But only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to U.S. officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent.

A top Constitutional scholar from Princeton who gave a televised speech that slammed President George W. Bush’s executive overreach was recently told that he had been added to the Transportation Security Administration’s terrorist watch list.

When inquiring with a clerk why he was on the list, Murphy was asked if he had participated in any peace marches.

“We ban a lot of people from flying because of that,” a clerk said.

“I have, of late, begun exercising the rights bestowed upon me by the democratic system I value, and the exercising of these rights has taken the form of an inquiry into what happened five years ago, an inquiry that resists the dominant explanations and that dares to entertain ideas that push me to the edge of what is bearable.”

“My own belief is that the act of asking is itself reparative, because it brings to life the values on which our constitution rests. I am, therefore, pledging my allegiance, hand over heart, trying, as always, for a rigorous truth.”

A Chinese court sentenced a former website editor to six years in prison after convicting him of subversion for posting online articles that “amounted to agitation aimed at toppling the Chinese government,” He served 18 months in a “re-education through labor” camp after he was charged with distributing “counterrevolutionary propaganda” during the 1989 pro-democracy campaign.

A media-rights group last month said China led the world in technological and judicial controls over online dissent with 52 people in Chinese jails for internet-related offenses at the end of last year.

Democratic leaders in Congress speedily announced this morning that they would conduct thorough oversight on reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation overstepped the boundaries of its authority under the Patriot Act. The head of the House Judiciary Committee warned that the potential for misconduct by the FBI “is almost without limit.”