Corporation Mulls Bid For House Seat

Murray Hill is planning to run in the Republican primary for Maryland's 8th Congressional District, which would be pretty unremarkable national news but for the fact that Murray Hill is not, well, actually a man named Murray Hill.

Rather, he -- er, it -- is a corporation: Murray Hill Inc., a progressive communications firm based outside the district in Maryland that works mainly with nonprofits. The company last week threw its name into a race previously reserved for people because, as its campaign slogan says, "corporations are people too!"

Or so many critics of the controversial Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court decision now fear. The ruling, announced by the court two weeks ago, in effect removes limits on corporate campaign contributions, equating the restrictions to censorship that violates the First Amendment. Corporations, the 5-4 decision declared, have a free-speech right to fund political advertising.

This logic only holds, according to its critics, if you believe money is speech and corporations are people (and that the founders who wrote the Constitution intended it that way)...