WASHINGTON – This week’s revelation by the influential Borowitz Report that a staggering $4 billion was spent on influencing the midterm elections, was nowhere felt as keenly as at the U.S. Supreme Court which today issued a press release headlined: “We Made a Terrible Mistake”.

It appears that in rendering its highly controversial opinion in the 2010 Citizens United case, the majority had relied heavily on Justice Anthony Kennedy’s conclusions that “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to…the appearance of corruption,” and that “… the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy.”

Since Tuesday’s purchase of many of the 436 seats in the house and 36 in the Senate by vested interests would seem to bring such conclusions into question, Chief Justice John Roberts launched an immediate investigation into the provenance of Justice Kennedy’s assertions. It turns out that they derived not from meticulous historical research, as had been assumed by the majority, but were dreamed up under last-minute pressure by one of Justice Kennedy’s law clerks who, according to unnamed sources, had just come off a Netflix-fueled weekend of binge-viewing all seventeen seasons of The O’Reilly Factor.

“We really f****d up on this one”, said Chief Justice Roberts, his choice of ribald candor over genteel circumspection being duly noted by this reporter as evidence of genuine remorse. He further averred, ipse dixit, that Citizens United would be unanimously overturned by SCOTUS at its next session.