Last week, the U.S. House passed legislation amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. One of the most controversial sections of the legislation was whether to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies like Verizon and AT&T for allowing the government to listen in on the phone calls of Americans without a warrant.

Naturally, the telecoms were  in favor of retroactive immunity but many saw it as providing cover to companies that helped the government break the law.

As we like to say here at Public Campaign, it's always good to follow the money. MapLight did the work for us and found that those who voted for the legislation granting retroactive immunity have received nearly double the amount of money in campaign contributions from industry PACs than those who voted against.

The numbers below represent the average amount of money from PACs to members of Congress from January 2005 to March 2008.

$9,659 to each member of the House voting "YES" (105-Dem, 188-Rep)
$4,810 to each member of the House voting "NO" (128-Dem, 1-Rep)

You can draw your own conclusions on this one.