Rules for Impeachment

* Congress has no power in the matter of the president except under the impeachment clauses of the Constitution. To be specific, neither house has the power to indict or try criminal offenses not amounting to high crimes or misdemeanors.

While the president is not above the law, neither is he beneath the law. Every citizen, including the president, accused of perjury or other crime has the right to be tried by a court which will apply the definition of the crime provided by law, rather than an ad hoc definition arrived at by the majority of a group of Congress members. This, then, is the rule of law so piously invoked by certain Congress members and TV commentators.

CONRAD L. SQUIRES

Burbank

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“Efforts to remove President Clinton from office appear all but doomed” (Nov. 21). This turn of phrase neatly captures the White House’s version of this sordid affair, namely, a partisan attempt to thwart the will of an electorate that twice chose the current president over his opponents. If this description of the aim of the inquiry is accurate, then its failure is to be celebrated. Suppose, however, that what is being thwarted is an attempt to hold the nation’s chief executive accountable for betraying the trust and reasonable expectations of the citizenry. Then the administration’s success in discrediting the opposition and avoiding the consequences of the president’s actions should be mourned by all serious Americans. I guess it all depends on how one frames the issue.

EDWARD M. YOUNG

Pasadena

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Having read about the duel between Vice President Aaron Burr and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton (Opinion, Nov. 22), it occurred to me that this nation would have been saved a lot of time and money if the two antagonists, Kenneth Starr and Bill Clinton, had just decided to have it out in the fashion of those Founding Fathers--arrange a duel, and let the best man win.

BARRY LAMONT

Gardena

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Re “Of Miss Jane Austen and Ms. Paula Jones,” Opinion, Nov. 22: It is a truth now universally acknowledged that Miss Paula Jones, a woman possessed of no fortune and little sense, allied herself with rightist zealots and rapacious lawyers in the partisan pursuit of a sometimes senseless political figure.

With the result, as Jane Austen would no doubt observe, of Miss Jones now being possessed with little fortune and perhaps only a little more sense.

CARL W. GOSS

Los Angeles