"High crimes and misdemeanours" refers to more than crimes.

In fact, the framers said a great deal. A reading of their comments yields several conclusions that are relevant to the Clinton inquiry.

1. The phrase "high crimes and misdemeanours" refers to more than crimes.

You will not find these words in any criminal code. The law does not refer to garden-variety crimes in terms of "high crimes" and "low crimes." The framers borrowed this phrase from the English, who had used it exclusively in the context of impeachment since 1376.

Misdemeanour can be found in the word's Latin origins -- "bad demeanour" or "bad conduct."

Such bad behavior need not involve any crime. As Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story explained in 1833: "No previous statute is necessary to authorize an impeachment for any official misconduct."

The Constitution draws a clear distinction between criminal indictment of a president (which requires that he have committed a specific crime spelled out in a statute) and impeachment (which does not). It is worth remembering that the articles of impeachment reported against President Nixon did not list a single crime.

2. The framers were particularly concerned about preserving the public trust.

Impeachment proceeds from the misconduct of public men

Alexander Hamilton wrote that impeachment "proceed(s) from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust." James Madison stated that impeachment was meant to remove presidents for "incapacity, negligence, or perfidity" (meaning a breach of faith or trust).

So what constitutes an impeachable breach of trust? The framers were reluctant to offer a comprehensive list of impeachable acts, since it would be impossible to anticipate every circumstance. But they did provide a few examples. James Iredell offered one that is particularly relevant today -- he declared that "the President must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate."

Justice Story insisted that we must look "to (English) parliamentary practice, and the common law, in order to ascertain, what are high crimes and misdemeanours ..."

The English considered a wide range of conduct impeachable. For example, in 1666 Viscount John Mordaunt was impeached for making uncivil addresses to a woman. And in 1701 Edward, the Earl of Oxford, was impeached for procuring an office for someone "known to be a person of ill fame and reputation." Although these precedents are old, they were undoubtedly present in the minds of the framers.

3. Recent precedent demands that lying to a grand jury be treated as an impeachable offense.

Earlier cases must serve as binding precedents in later cases.

There have been 17 cases of impeachment in our nation's history, 13 of which involved federal judges. The most recent one occurred in 1989 when Judge Walter Nixon was impeached and removed from office for making false statements to a grand jury -- precisely the same accusation against Clinton.

So we have recent and unambiguous precedent establishing that this is impeachable conduct. To say otherwise would be to embrace a double standard -- one for judges and another for the president.

Furthermore, the articles of impeachment reported against President Nixon accused him of making misleading statements to deceive the public -- yet another precedent indicating that Congress should treat Clinton's misconduct as impeachable.

4. The framers would have regarded President Clinton's misconduct as impeachable.

To say otherwise would be to embrace a double standard -- one for judges and another for the president.

Such a massive loss of credibility arguably renders a president unfit to govern. As presidential scholar Richard Neustadt once wrote, the real power of a president is his power to persuade. Someone who has been exposed as a liar is stripped of this ability to persuade. By abusing his power, President Clinton has lost it.