Heh, we all have and will do it. There are two kinds of people, those who make mistakes and those who lie about it
I understand that no President can know all things at all times and that includes Obama, but when something has been in the major press for a long time and it involves the justice dept and it's actions it's pretty hard to say "I had no idea". Warrantless wiretapping in this country has been a topic of much debate here since our government decided to do away with traditional Constitutional protections during the Bush administration. It's amusing to see the "see you are just after Obama" posts when myself and some others made it known that we did not approve of the warrantless program. The Republican (read Bush) supporters kept claiming that the three day waiting period for a warrant meant that bad guys got away. What they refused to acknowledge is that under FISA as it was there wasn't a need to obtain a warrant before a wiretap. If it was believed that the matter was of grave importance and needed immediate action, a tap could be implemented immediately, however an application for a warrant must be sent to the FISA court within 3 days.
There was a great cry against this by the Dem side on the forum, and generally, but now it's "well the law allows it, Obama has no say, Obama must obey the Republican mandate" and on and on. Substantially the Dems are no different in this regard with Obama than the Reps are with Bush. The other side of the coin is that we get to see people who where ardent supporters of the program during the last administration crying now. Obviously it's the same motivation, someone elses guy is doing it, not theirs.
Playing spot the hypocrite does get old though and takes away from the problem, and that's the ever increasing expansion of a tool that was originally designed to counter serious threats to national security from terrorists and support groups.
Now there's no sense in my "BUT BOOSHing" this since Bush is no longer in office. Obama is and he has or has allowed an extending of the various programs and their scope beyond the egregious abuses of his predecessor. I'm not sure why I am supposed to support or excuse this when I didn't before, but that's how partisan hackery works.
There is something good here though and that's the actions of the Solicitor General, who found that secret evidence gathering had been done and the defendant had to be notified. That led to the ability to bring a challenge to the SCOTUS. The SG is part of the DOJ, which in turn belongs to the Executive Branch, and we know who runs that, well most of us do, but the SG is the person the SCOTUS holds in highest regard, as he is the one who represents the government in cases presented to it. In other words if he loses credibility he's less than worthless. He has a similar relationship with Congress. He cannot afford to be the puppet. That said, the actions of the DOJ in the past have been to prevent people learning about whether they have been targets, and so far the EFF and the ACLU have been thwarted in their efforts to examine if Americans have been inappropriately targeted. The DOJ has successfully argued that effectively one needs access to classified information to see if you were tapped, but to do that you have to show you were tapped to get access to the classified information, an intentional Catch-22. The significance of the OP's post is that for the first time it's been acknowledged that there was a wiretap without a warrant, and so a case can proceed. Since efforts in the past have been to prevent such a thing I expect some blocking tactic or other technicality is being worked on. It's beyond credulity that something of this magnitude has eluded Obama for such a long time. This is hardly just anything.
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