I love Ray Kelly but this is too much

The police infiltrates peaceful bike marches like Critical Mass. They videotape some of the participants. What the heck for? They claim that it is to keep the peace, but it seems to me that that's what the uniformed cops are for. They are probably doing a great job of keeping this city safe, but it's a waste of time and effort to send disguised officers to bike parades. It has the whiff of Orwellian je ne sais quoi about it.
The powers that be, be they the Bush administration or the NYPD, have tried to abuse the circumstance of 9/11 ever since it happened. While it is true that certain measures have to be taken to ensure we are safe from violent threats, the decidedly undemocratic, unconstitutional bent of some of these measures is very serious and very scary. And now we have an extension of the Patriot act, ladies and gents.
As Dr. Johnson said, or so I heard him quoted in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory, (run to the Film Forum):
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.