Did the scientists say why their opinion on moral matters is headline news?

I don't even disagree with them. It's just that whether something should be treated as a "non-human person" is a matter of values, and I don't think the common set of values around personhood has anything to do with intelligence. If you want it to, you need to change that first.

I agree with your first sentence.

I do disagree with them though. I don't think there is such a thing as a "non-human person" let alone applying it to the animal kingdom.

Edit: PETA must love it though

Then I think you agree with my entire comment. What I meant to get at is, my values and these scientists' values are both uncommon and non-normative, so they're pretty much irrelevant — most people don't care about the intellectual or emotional qualities of the creature in considering whether it's a person. The general heuristic is something along the lines of "Is it identifiably H. sapiens and alive?"

so, uh, would they be able to make contributions to political campaigns?

previous discussion:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1875014

What does that mean anyway? We can't even come to an agreement on how to treat human persons.