WILL America’s dysfunctional President finally be impeached? APN asked an American friend, Professor Leo Raditsa, for an update. He has faxed:

"Nobody really understands the impeachment process, nobody sees the whole. But each step of the way educates not only the public but the senators, learning that they act as judges, not merely jurors. A messy, piecemeal business, but my basic sense is that unless the Democrats succeed in halting the trial, Clinton will be stripped of office. The process will bring senators to ask themselves whether they can, in the face of past and present, vote openly to ignore the felonious acts of a president.

"They can scream and holler and do all they can to stop the process, but once they have to cast their votes before the world, their minds will clear. As somebody once said of hanging, it concentrates the mind wonderfully.

He would first want his honour back. But Bill Clinton, we should know by now, is unburdened by these normal restraints and so invites us all to endorse his Presidential fantasy life.’

"Up to now members of the House Judiciary Committee, now called managers, under the leadership of Henry Hyde, one of the few members of Congress who knows English and has obviously read classic prose, have carried the full burden of the prosecution with little support from the Republican leadership.

"This little band of men has fought on for impeachment almost alone with remarkable courage. Standing alone has given them the stuff to write a whole series of memorable and classic speeches of a quality unheard of in public addresses in the US that usually sound like they were written by somebody else for somebody else.

"Democrats have argued that dismissing Clinton from office would have uncontrollable destructive consequences. Instead, it would strengthen the country and give it back some of its self-respect."