The bought-and-paid-for conservatives on the Wisconsin Supreme Court surprised no one today with their decision to call a halt to the John Doe investigation into alleged illegal campaign collusion between Gov. Scott Walker and corporate America's dark-money groups.

But that doesn't make the court's decision any less onerous or, in the words of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign's Matt Rothschild, any less dangerous.

What the decision effectively does is to allow political candidates to bypass state law on contribution limits by steering big contributors to supposedly outside groups, where there are no donation limits. That money, thanks to today's ruling, then can be coordinated with the politician's campaign. That's been illegal in Wisconsin until now. The court, it seems, doesn't believe that voters have the right to know the source of money that is financing political campaigns.

The four conservative justices who joined in the ruling — Michael Gableman, David Prosser, Patience Roggensack and Annette Ziegler — have been beneficiaries of at least $10 million in campaign spending by the same parties that the Milwaukee County John Doe was investigating.