They called it "low crimes and misdemeanours" in the Washington Post where an editorial tackled the political conundrum on the minds of the American press yesterday.
To impeach or not to impeach, that was the question. A puzzler so taxing that the Post sat firmly on the fence for fear, perhaps, of making a wrong call.
The evidence that the President lied under oath both in his deposition in the Paula Jones case and before the grand jury was compelling, it said.
"The President lied about his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He lied about being alone with her. He lied about conversations with her concerning her prospective testimony," it read.
The Post went on to rap the knuckles of Mr Kenneth Starr who it said had not concerned himself exclusively with allegations supported by evidence. Nor had he been as restrained as the Post, if not the Internet browsing world, would have liked.
"The decision to write the report in the form that resembles a steamy paperback smacks of an effort to embarrass the President," it scolded. Not content with casting aspersions on the literary motives of Starr, the Post went on to accuse the much-maligned independent counsel of being arrogant. He was arrogant, it said, to contend in the report that mounting a vigorous defence against Mr Starr was an impeachable offence.
Even more haughty, according to the Post, was the willingness of the prosecutors to "draw inferences and make judgments plainly designed to colour Congress's judgment". It was sharply in contrast to the restraint shown during Watergate.
But even the sloppiness of Mr Starr can't save President Clinton, it said. "Even when the excesses are stripped away, the case he has presented is serious, while Mr Clinton's current defence is contemptible."
His claim that oral sex did not meet the definition of sexual relations was "sophistry so tortured that no satirist would have deemed it plausible enough to be humorous".
Instead of twisting the knife, the Post just toyed with it, concluding that Mr Clinton's behaviour was "at the margins of impeachability, straddling the line that separates disqualifying crimes from conduct that merely mars indelibly the presidential office and the man who holds it".
The usually pro-Clinton New York Times stuck its neck much further above the presidential parapet, without actually shouting "Off with his head".
"By using the White House for sad little trysts with a desperately star-struck employee, by skulking around within sight of nervous Secret Service agents, by conducting erotic games while travelling without his wife, Mr Clinton has produced a crisis of surreal complexity," it said.
"A president without public respect or congressional support cannot last," it added.
Back in at the seat of power, the conservative Washington Times made itself abundantly clear. "Go, you despicable man, go and be gone," it said.
Hammering the final nails in the Clinton coffin, it continued: "For all the practised hang-dog contrition, for all the moving rhetoric of repentance, the President continues to lie. It is an insult. It is brazen. And all people of conscience should now be demanding that he resign - and once and for all take his leave of the sewer he has made out of public life."
The Baltimore Sun took the softly-softly approach, reminding readers that there was little in the Starr report that they didn't already know. "The nation is embarrassed. President Clinton is diminished. But at first reading the test of impeachable crimes is not met," said the Sun.
The New York Daily News urged caution in an editorial, saying that Americans must reserve judgment until Mr Clinton's defence is heard. Despite this sensible advice, the News still took the award for best Starr report headline: "The XXX Files".