Being on vacation this past week, I was in a unique position to hear large chunks of the House Judiciary Committee's deliberations on the president's perjury investigation.

Actually, I was encouraged, somewhat, by what I saw and heard.

Spin-masters on both sides of the aisle continually call for bipartisanship, and admittedly I didn't see that. All the votes and all the arguments were straight down party lines.

That's nothing to lose your faith in the republic over, but it is a cause of some concern. On the one hand, it's perfectly reasonable for people who are trying to follow conscience to see things from their own perspective, especially in a matter as muddy as this.

Yes, I know, it's as clear as crystal to us conservatives that perjury is a felony, and the president committed it not once but several times. He subverted the very foundation of our court system, i.e. the plaintiff's right to file suit, to call witnesses and to have those witnesses tell the truth.

To us it's obvious this president should be impeached.

To liberals it's equally clear that the president did wrong, and that he should be punished either through censure or by being prosecuted after he leaves office, or both. But to them it is equally clear that this offense does not rise to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

To a majority of Americans... well, frankly the majority of Americans haven't given it much thought. A majority of Americans decided when the news first came out that this was a sex scandal and they weren't interested.

They really were interested, mind you, but they feigned disinterest because that's the fashionable thing to do. Meanwhile they devoured every salacious detail they could get their hands on, but ignored the heart of the matter, which is the perjury and the difficulty of assigning it a place in the hierarchy of presidential crimes.

Most, I think, have never really considered the very serious arguments on both sides, or the consequences to the nation if this crime goes unpunished. It's about sex, they think, and they cynically assume that Republicans are exploiting some silly scandal in order to try and bring the president down.

I admit to cynicism as well. I tend to think that Democrats are going to support the president no matter what he does, as long as his popularity remains high, and that Republicans will make their stand based on similar party sentiment, regardless of what their conscience may tell them.

I even tend to interpret the announcements by many Republicans that they will vote against impeachment as a self-serving decision to take the path of least resistance.

But, as I said, I was encouraged by early debate in the committee.

Members on both sides actually made some pretty good arguments... arguments that showed they had given the matter some deep thought.

The eloquent but obviously partisan John Conyers was the one exception, hammering over and over his assertion that the whole matter is about sex and that Republicans are being too partisan, no matter what they do. He and James Carvill are cut from the same cloth.

But other Democrats presented very well thought-out treatises based on precedents in law. I disagree with their arguments, but I can put myself in their place and accept their point of view with somewhat diminished cynicism.

Same for the other side.

I do wish, though, that at least one Democrat could see things the other way. It would give me a little more encouragement that people are truly following conscience and not simply constructing very clever arguments to cover the fact that in reality they are putting party ahead of country.

Same for the other side.

In the final analysis, Republicans should be looking for a way out, probably through the censure compromise or some sort of deferred indictment that can be done without fatally damaging the rule of law.

It should be clear by now that impeachment, if it is begun, will not result in removal of the president from office. Republicans have to ask themselves whether fighting the good fight in the name of conscience and patriotism is worth the cost.

We still need spending cuts, tax cuts, abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service, a stronger defense, a truly balanced budget, continuation of welfare reform (which, by the way, is working wonders), and other changes in government that will never take place if Republicans lose their majority in Congress.