"Hillary-The Movie"

Hillary: The Movie, a slashing critique of then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, is taking center stage tomorrow at the U.S. Supreme Court, where the film's producers are using it to challenge the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

During the 2008 presidential primary campaign, a conservative advocacy group called Citizens United produced Hillary: The Movie, a 90-minute documentary that was available on DVD and came and went quickly in theaters. The group wanted to run it on cable TV as an on-demand movie and maintained that it was not subject to federal campaign rules because the movie did not say explicitly that people should vote for or against Clinton.

Now this case, involving the Hillary movie, has morphed into a broad attack on McCain-Feingold again. It is also an attack on the notion, first put forth by the Supreme Court more than 100 years ago, that corporate contributions from general treasury funds can be banned.

Representing Citizens United on Tuesday is Ted Olson, who as solicitor general in the Bush administration successfully defended the McCain-Feingold law in the Supreme Court six years ago. This time he is on the other side, attacking the law as it has been applied and contending that corporations should be allowed to spend unlimited amounts of their general treasury funds in campaigns.

"What is the matter with corporations? Are they inherently evil? Corporations — just as much as individuals — are entitled to protection under the First Amendment," Olson says.

But Larry Noble, former general counsel for the Federal Election Commission, counters that this case is not really about small nonprofit corporations and their corporate contributors.

"What Citizens United is doing here is its actually making a broadside attack on the corporate prohibition," Noble says.
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(Would you accept a ruling that gives corporate entities the same rights as a person?)