With a second look it doesn't seem so bad. My initial reaction was based on info from the MSM -- will I ever learn. Or maybe I just didn't read things close enough. It appears that Williams was responsible for getting the advertising for his show and one of his clients ended up being the government. If his syndicators understood that this was the arrangement, and that he was self-employed and not on someone's editorial staff, then no lines were crossed. It was basically no different than E&P accepting money for an ad from a newspaper that they write about-- which they do all the time.
. . .and Robert Novak (who has faced ethics questions of his own after outing an undercover CIA agent in his Chicago Sun-Times/Creators Syndicate column).
This gratutious smear against Novak bugs me exponentially more than what Williams is accused of.