As Democrats continue to distance themselves from President Clinton over his affair with Ms Monica Lewinsky, first denied and then admitted, work is being speeded up on the report by the independent counsel Mr Kenneth Starr. This is now expected to trigger impeachment proceedings by Congress against the president.
The speculation about the president's fate has overshadowed the reports in the US media about his visit last week to Ireland. This is thanks to the Democratic senator Mr Joseph Lieberman, who during the visit denounced the president's behaviour as "immoral" and "disgraceful".
Other senior Democrats such as Senator Daniel Moynihan and Mr Bob Kerrey have endorsed their colleague's strictures on the president as have an increasing number of Democratic members of the House of Representatives.
Senator Moynihan yesterday went even further when he suggested that the president's denial of sexual relations with Ms Lewinsky in a deposition last January could be grounds for impeachment for perjury. The senator, speaking on the Meet the Press, programme, called for the impeachment proceedings to take place soon after the delivery of the Starr report but he also said that Congress could yet clear the president of wrongdoing.
Congressman James Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, said on another TV programme that the president was now "bound" to face impeachment proceedings and that a motion of censure would probably not suffice. "I now don't think that's really an option. I think we're bound to go through with impeachment proceedings," he said.
In another harmful snub to Mr Clinton, the Democratic Governor of Maryland, Mr Parris Glendenning, has cancelled a fundraiser for next month at which the president was to have raised thousands of dollars for the governor's re-election campaign. The governor has also announced that he will not now attend Mr Clinton's visit to a school in the Washington suburbs tomorrow.
He said Mr Clinton's behaviour was "wrong, inappropriate and demanding of a sincere, major apology". Aides to Governor Glendenning say that since the president admitted lying about his affair with Ms Lewinsky in a TV address on August 17th, they were finding it difficult to sell tickets for the $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser.
As Mr Starr's legal team is said to be busy drafting the report, there is speculation in Washington that there may be further revelations in the media concerning the president's relations with another woman or other women. Bob Woodward, who helped to bring down President Nixon with his reporting on the Watergate scandal, was said to be getting ready to publish sensational allegations in yesterday's Washington Post, but this did not happen.
But in a front-page article headed "White House Braces for Starr" another reporter, Susan Schmidt, quotes an unnamed Clinton adviser as expecting a "devastating" report. The White House is said to fear that the president's claim that his denial of sexual relations with Ms Lewinsky was "legally correct" will encourage Mr Starr to provide details of their meetings off the Oval Office to refute this, based on her testimony.
Congressional leaders are to decide at a meeting later this week how to handle the report. A resolution will have to be rushed through restricting the full report to the members of the House Judiciary Committee for initial study but insisting that the full Congress and the media be provided with a 45-page executive summary.
Mr Starr is refusing to say when his report will be sent to Congress. But there is an expectation it will be by the middle of September.
Senator Joseph Lieberman, said yesterday Mr Clinton has the capacity to be a moral leader and salvage his presidency.