On a dramatic day in American history that was at once surreal and sad, the Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives approved three articles of impeachment against the President. The articles accuse him of, among other things, providing perjurious and misleading testimony to a grand jury and obstructing justice in an effort to delay, impede and cover up evidence in the cases relating to Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky.

The voting was mostly along party lines with the 21 Republicans on the panel voting for impeachment and the 16 Democrats opposing it. A fourth article of impeachment will be taken up on Saturday and is expected to be approved also. A lone Republican voted with the Democrats against the second article.The matter will now gobefore the full House of Representatives next week where, too, the Republicans hold a slender majority. The House can, and may, impeach the President.

If it does -- and there is a good chance it could -- the final stagewill be the Senate, which will hold a trial (when it convenes in January) to convict the President. The Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court will preside. A two-thirds vote in the 100-member Senate will result in the President's removal from office. Republicans hold a 55-45 advantage in the Senate and might find it hard to get the 12 votes needed to banish Clinton from office.

This has never happened in US history. Richard Nixon resigned before the articles of impeachment -- approved by the same committee -- came up before the full House. Only one US President, Andrew Johnson, who followed Abraham Lincoln to the White House, has been impeached by the full House. But even he escaped conviction in the Senate by a solitary vote.

Covering Johnson's impeachment over a century ago, achronicler had written trenchantly of the ugly political spectacle that unfolded in Washington. That reporter, Mark Twain, would not have perceived anything different today.Partisan Republicans railroaded the impeachment articles through the committee after a bitter and divisive debate in which the Democrats resisted every inch of the way. Moments before the articles were taken up for vote, Clinton made a dramatic television appearance in the White House Rose Garden, virtually grovelling before legislators and the American people and begging for mercy.

``I am profoundly sorry for all I have done wrong in words and deeds.... Mere words cannot express the profound remorse I feel...,'' a dewy-eyed Clinton said as a few members of the Committee scrambled out to catch his remarks before casting their vote. The President admitted for the first time that he had misled the country, the Congress and his family.

``Quite simply, I gave in to my shame,'' he confessed and, again for the first time, publicly said hewould accept censure or rebuke from the lawmakers.

But the latest act of contrition did not sufficiently move the Republicans, who have kept raising the benchmark for his repentance. ``He is still not reconciled to his crime,'' one Republican lawmaker said, arguing that while the President was now admitting he misled, he should confess he lied and committed perjury.

The few who went out to catch the appeal from the White House filtered back grimly, but most Republicans ignored the five-minute speech and continued with the rites, hammering the first nails into Clinton's presidential coffin as the nation's political elite watched in dismay and horror at a process that seems to have moved beyond everyone's control.

Clinton himself appeared dejected and disconsolate as he made his last pitch before leaving for West Asia on Saturday morning. The White House hopes that when the matter comes up before the House next week, they will be able to reach out to the dozen or so moderate Republicans whose votesagainst impeachment can forestall the ignominy.

It's not poetic justice , says the President

``The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on, nor all your piety, nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.'' President Bill Clinton quoted the poem to stress that he cannot go back and undo what he did howsoever may wish to do so. ``So nothing -- not piety, nor tears, nor wit, nor torment -- can alter what I have done. I must make with that,'' he said in an emotional speech , but to no avail.