A tacit admission that the spy program is illegal?

Next week, Congress is scheduled to hold hearings on the administration's domestic spying without a warrant program, which many critics claim is illegal. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, brushed off such criticism.

"Congress, by statute, cannot extinguish a core constitutional authority of the president," Roberts wrote, in a 19 page letter, according to the Associated Press.

This is a bit confusing on two fronts.

Sen. Roberts claims this presidential power grab is not statuatory but constitutional. However, most defenders of the controversial programs have cited past Congressional legislation and resolutions as the legal basis of the spying without a warrant program.

If Congressional legislation gave the presidency this power, a contention which many legal scholars do accept, that means the presidency didn't have that power previously. Which means that the authority is NOT inherent in the Constitution.

Some Bush allies say Congress gave the president this power; Roberts says the Constitution gave the president this power. Which is it?

Perhaps Roberts specious claim of a constitutional basis for this authority is a tacit admission that the previous argument of it being Congressionally-authorized simply has no legal credibility.

Additionally, I'd invite Roberts to show the Constitutional passage which gives the president the authority to spy on American citizens without a warrant. Article II of the Constitution, which deals with the powers of the president, doesn't seem to mention anything to that effect.

Conservatives normally champion a restrictive intrepretation of the Constitution and denounce 'activist judges' who diverge from that dogma. Isn't it ironic that many of those same conservatives are so eager to use the most creative, nay the most liberal, constitutional interpretations imaginable when it comes to the power of this president?