4) By his pattern of lies under oath, misleading statements and deceit, he has seriously undermined the integrity and credibility of the Office of President and thereby the honor and integrity of the United States.

5) His pattern of perjuries, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering has affected the truth seeking process which is the foundation of our legal system.

6) By mounting an assault in the truth seeking process, he has attacked the entire Judicial Branch of government.

The ultimate issue is whether the President's course of conduct is such as to affect adversely the Office of the President and also upon the administration of justice, and whether he has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive to the Rule of Law and Constitutional government.

Our

founders decided in the Constitutional Convention that one of the duties imposed upon the President is to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Furthermore, he is required to take an oath to "Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Twice this President stood on the steps of the Capitol, raised his right hand to God and repeated that oath.

the President of the United States who twice took an oath to preserve, protect and defend those rights. But we now know what the "sanctity of an oath" means to the President.

And what does that do to confidence in the honor and integrity of the United States?

Make no mistake, the conduct of the President is inextricably bound to the welfare of the people of the United States. Not only does it affect economic and national defense, but even more directly, it affects the moral and law-abiding fibre of the commonwealth, without which no nation can survive. When, as here, that conduct involves a pattern of abuses of power, of perjury, of deceit, of obstruction of justice and of the Congress, and of other illegal activities, the resulting damage to the honor and respect due to the United States is, of necessity, devastating.

Apart from all else, the President's illegal actions constitute an attack upon and utter disregard for the truth, and for the rule of law. Much worse, they manifest an arrogant disdain not only for the rights of his fellow citizens, but also for the functions and the integrity of the other two co-equal branches of our constitutional system. One of the witnesses that appeared earlier likened the government of the United States to a three-legged stool. The analysis is apt, because the entire structure of our country rests upon three equal supports: the Legislative, the Judicial, and the Executive. Remove one of those supports, and the State will totter. Remove two and the structure will collapse altogether.

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues of the people's House, I wish to talk to you about the rule of law. After months of argument, hours of debate, there is no need for further complexity. The question before this House is rather simple. It's not a question of sex. Sexual misconduct and adultery are private acts and are none of Congress' business.

It's not even a question of lying about sex. The matter before the House is a question of lying under oath. This is a public act, not a private act. This is called perjury. The matter before the House is a question of the willful, premeditated, deliberate corruption of the nation's system of justice. Perjury and obstruction of justice cannot be reconciled with the office of the president of the United States.

The personal fate of the president is not the issue. The political fate of his party is not the issue. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is not the issue. The issue is perjury -- lying under oath. The issue is obstruction of justice, which the president has sworn the most solemn oath to uphold.

That oath constituted a compact between the president and the American people. That compact has been broken. The people's trust has been betrayed. The nation's chief executive has shown himself unwilling or incapable of enforcing its laws for he has corrupted the rule of law -- the rule of law -- by his perjury and his obstruction of justice.

That and nothing other than that is the issue before this house.

We have heard ceaselessly that, even if the president is guilty of the charges in the Starr referral, they don't rise to the level of an impeachable offense.

Well, just what is an impeachable offense?

One authority, Professor Stephen Presser of Northwestern University Law School said, and I quote, "Impeachable offenses are those which demonstrate a fundamental betrayal of public trust. They suggest the federal official has deliberately failed in his duty to uphold the Constitution and laws he was sworn to enforce." Close quote. ...

And so we must decide if a president, the chief law enforcement officer of the land, the person who appoints the attorney general, the person who nominates every federal judge, the person who nominates to the Supreme Court and the only person with a constitutional obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, can lie under oath repeatedly and maintain it is not a breach of trust sufficient for impeachment.

The president is the trustee of the nation's conscience and so are we here today. There have been many explosions in our committee hearings on the respective role of the House and Senate. Under the Constitution, the House accuses and the Senate adjudicates.

True, the formula language of our articles recites the ultimate goal of removal from office, but this language doesn't trump the Constitution, which defines the separate functions, the different functions, of the House and the Senate.

Our Founding Fathers didn't want the body that accuses to be the same one that renders final judgment, and they set up an additional safeguard of a two-thirds vote for removal. So despite protests, our job is to decide if there is enough evidence to submit to the Senate for a trial.

That's what the Constitution says, no matter what the president's defenders say. When Ben Franklin, on September 18, 1787, told a Mrs. Powell, that the founders and framers had given us a republic if you can keep it, perhaps he anticipated a future time when bedrock principles of our democracy would be mortally threatened as the rule of law stands in the line of fire today.

Nothing I can think of more clearly illustrates that America is a continuing experiment, never finished; that our democracy is always a work in progress. Then this debate today -- for we sit here with the power to shake and reconfigure the charter of our freedom, just as the founders and framers did. We can strengthen our Constitution by giving it content and meaning, or we can weaken and wound it by tolerating and thus encouraging lies under oath and evasions and breaches of trust on the part of our chief executive.

The president's defenders in this House have rarely denied the facts. They have not seriously challenged the contention of the independent counsel that the president did not tell the truth in two sworn testimonies. They have not seriously attempted to discredit the facts brought before the committee by the independent counsel. They've admitted, in effect, he did it. But then they've argued that this does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense.

This is the "so-what" defense, whereby a chief executive, the successor to George Washington, can cheapen the oath, and it really doesn't matter.

Let's be clear. The vote that all of us are asked to cast is, in the final analysis, a vote on the rule of law.

Now the rule of law is one of the great achievements of our civilization, for the alternative is the rule of raw power. We here today are the heirs of 3,000 years of history in which humanity slowly, painfully, at great cost evolved a form of politics in which law, not brute force, is the arbiter of our public destinies.

We are the heirs of the Ten Commandments and the Mosaic Law, a moral code for a free people, who, having been liberated from bondage, sought in law a means to avoid falling back into the habits of slaves.

We are the heirs of Roman Law, the first legal system by which peoples of different cultures, languages, races and religions came to live together in a form of political community.

We are the heirs of the Magna Carta, by which the free men of England began to break the arbitrary and unchecked power of royal absolutism. We're the heirs of a long tradition of parliamentary development in which the rule of law gradually came to replace royal prerogative as a means for governing a society of free men and women.

We're the heirs of 1776 and of an epic moment in human affairs, when the founders of this Republic pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honors. Think of that -- sacred honor -- to the defense of the rule of law.

We are the heirs of a hard-fought war between the states, which vindicated the rule of law over the appetites of some for owning others. We are the heirs of the century's great struggles against totalitarianism, in which the rule of law was defended at immense cost against the worst tyrannies in human history.

The phrase "rule of law" is no pious aspiration from a civics textbook. The rule of law is what stands between all of us and the arbitrary exercise of power by the state. The rule of law is the safeguard of our liberties. The rule of law is what allows us to live our freedom in ways that honor the freedom of others, while strengthening the common good.

In 1838, Abraham Lincoln celebrated the rule of law before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, and linked it to the perpetuation of American liberties and American political institutions. Listen to Lincoln, from 1838: "Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of '76 did to support the Declaration of Independence, so the support of the Constitution and laws, let every American pledge his life, his property and his sacred honor. Let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father and to tear the character of his own and his children's liberty.

"Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap. Let it be taught in the schools, seminaries, colleges. Let it be written in primers, spelling books, almanacs. Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls and enforced in the halls of -- in the courts of justice."

So said Lincoln.

My colleagues, we have been sent here to strengthen and defend the rule of law -- not to weaken, not to attenuate it, not to disfigure it. This is not a question of perfection; it's a question of foundations.

This isn't a matter of setting the bar too high; it's a matter of securing the basic structure of our freedom -- which is the rule of law.

No man or woman, no matter how highly placed, no matter how effective a communicator, no matter how gifted a manipulator of opinion or winner of votes, can be above the law in a democracy. That is not a counsel of perfection. That is a rock-bottom, irreducible principle of our public life.

What we're telling you today are not the ravings of some vindictive political crusade but a reaffirmation of a set of values that are tarnished and dim these days, but it is given to us to restore them so our founding fathers would be proud.

Listen, it's your country. The president is our flag bearer.

He stands out in front our people when the flag is flowing. Catch the falling flag as we keep our appointment with history.