× Thanks for reading! Log in to continue. Enjoy more articles by logging in or creating a free account. No credit card required. Log in Sign up {{featured_button_text}}

"What hath God wrought" was the first message ever transmitted in Morse code. In 1844, Samuel Morse sent that message from Washington to Baltimore, repeating a phrase from the Old Testament Book of Numbers.

After the recent campaign for Congress, we might ask not what the supreme being hath wrought, but what the Supreme Court hath wrought.

In a spate of decisions, most notoriously Citizens United, the Supreme Court abolished virtually all regulations on campaign spending, allowing billionaires and large corporations to pour billions of dollars, mostly undisclosed, into buying a Congress that will do their bidding.

The court opened the floodgates to massive spending. The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that the cost of the 2014 elections will be over $3.6 billion, the most expensive midterm election ever. Much of that money was not spent by the candidates themselves, but by "dark money" outside groups who flooded the airwaves with harsh, often vicious, attack ads. The source of the "dark money" may never be known, thanks to the Supreme Court.