Both opinion polls measuring the barometer of public opinion and the views expressed by many lawmakers, including Democrats, suggest the best course available now is to rebuke President Clinton and get on with business. What the President has done is inexcusable but not impeachable, appears to be the general consensus.

Many Republicans too are veering around to this option, but with a caveat that the President and his lawyers should stop the legal hairsplitting in still trying to defend his actions. In a bid to get Clinton off the perjury hook, Clinton attorneys are still yammering about the President being correct about not technically having had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.

``(The hairsplitting ) is counterproductive and I think it makes people even today think he's nottelling the truth, and frankly it's time to just admit it, go from there, say he didn't mean to commit perjury...,'' Orrin Hatch, a Republican Senator from Utah who has been sympathetic to Clinton, said on Sunday.

This continued legal jiggery-pokery has irked some Republicans. Although most people feel the sexual hanky panky Clinton indulged in is not deserving of impeachment, the White House combative strategy even in the face of contrition pushed some GOP leaders to warn of impeachment.

``If (Clinton) begins the process with attacks, and says this is just a smear, that doesn't help... If they continue to argue the `legally accurate' approach, it won't fly,'' Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said, suggesting that the harder the White House fought the charges the quicker it would be mired in the quicksand of impeachment. Lott said Clinton is ``continuing the very things, I think, that got him in trouble -- legal niceties, and trying to explain problems that can't just be dismissed.''

Clinton advisorscame out of the woodwork in strength on the Sunday talk shows, defending him spiritedly and denying that he was even considering resigning. According to some experts, one reason Clinton cannot consider resigning is that if he does, as a commoner he will immediately be indicted by the Grand Jury on criminal charges. John Podesta, a key Clinton aide, said on a Sunday talkshow that the President had not read the Starr Report and had told him he was not going to read it.

Asked why, Podesta said, ``I think he's decided that he's said what he has to say to the country and he's working on the healing process... and I think that he is trying to put this episode, painful as it is, behind him and move on.''

Meanwhile, President Clinton's job approval rating is holding with only minor variations, although his ratings for honesty, integrity and personal morality has fallen to record lows.

Surprisingly, Clinton's support remains high among women, a majority of whom have always backed the President (in the 1996election, 56 women voted for him compared to 43 per cent men). Black support for Clinton also remains very high -- more than 80 per cent.

The clergy has also been restrained in criticising Clinton, taking the line of forgiveness. The churchgoing Clinton skipped mass on Sunday. One section of the Starr Report revealed that Clinton and Lewinsky had a sexual encounter on an Easter Sunday just before he went to church.

The media has been the most critical section. At least 25 major American newspapers have called for Clinton's resignation through their editorials over the last week. Their line seems completely out of sync with the public, which seems far more forgiving.