Richard Dreyfuss Calls For Impeachment of President Bush

With a hat tip to the Drudge Report and CNS News, actor Richard Dreyfuss, speaking in front of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, called for the impeachment of President George W. Bush stating “‘There are causes worth fighting for even if you know that you will lose.’"

Dreyfuss continued (from video): “Unless you are willing to accept torture as part of a normal American political lexicon; unless you are willing to accept that leaving the Geneva Convention is fine and dandy; if you accept the expression of wiretapping as business as usual, the only way to express this now is to embrace the difficult and perhaps embarrassing process of impeachment."

And continued by claiming that impeachment “‘is a statement that we refuse to endorse bad behavior.’" “‘If we refuse to debate the appropriateness of the process of impeachment, we endorse that behavior, and we approve the enlargement of executive power,’ regardless of whoever may occupy the White House in the future, he said.”

Updated with video (30 secs), as aired on Friday's (Feb. 17) Hannity & Colmes on FNC: Real (900 KB) or Windows Media (1 MB)

Dreyfuss challenged the media to heed his clarion call: “‘Now, it is not your job as the press to impeach George Bush,’ the actor stated. However, people in the media should ‘maintain the integrity of that debate’ by not dismissing the topic out of hand as partisan or unpatriotic.”

Dreyfuss blamed television for America’s reaction to the attacks on September 11, 2001:

“Dreyfuss blamed part of that reaction on television newscasters, who ‘fill the air with the same terrible clips, the same blaring intro music, the same screaming fonts, and then the same clips again and the same screaming fonts again and again to fill up these news cycles.’

"‘Television did this. Television created the sound bite and then shrunk it,’ the actor said. ‘Television replaced words with images so that people make extraordinary decisions based not on prose or any attempt at analysis,’ but on pictures instead.”

Who is the worst offender? Those who label critics of the government as having ulterior motives:

“‘Watch me lose my sense of humor if people accuse me of treason,’ Dreyfuss said before mocking two of the Fox News Channel's most popular hosts. "'That's not very O'Reilly of you, Mister Smarty-Pants,' or “‘What would Sean Hannity have to say about that, Mister Too-Complex-for-Your-Own-Good?'"