A week after Democrats nearly killed the proposed "John Doe" protection, the measure was revived in a conference committee:

A late-night agreement yesterday guaranteed that so-called "John Doe" protection -- to prevent airline passengers from being sued for reporting suspicious behavior -- will get a floor vote in the House and Senate.

"This is a huge win -- a hard-fought victory for House Republicans and, more importantly, for the American people," said Peter T. King, New York Republican and ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee.

The provision survived a contentious congressional process before a House-Senate conference committee agreed just before midnight yesterday to include the measure in the final draft of the September 11 Commission bill.

The move ensures the provision cannot be amended on the floor. It is expected to come to a vote in both houses of Congress before the August recess.

Some Republican aides are attributing the mounting pressure to support the provision to press reports and the blogosphere, where bloggers turned bloggyists are posting phone numbers of Democrat congressional leaders and urging readers to call in with their support.

"The blogs have been a terrific vehicle for expressing public outrage over Democratic attempts to kill this provision," said a spokesman for [Rep. Peter T.] King.

I have personally seen ... unbelievable amounts of hits from .gov and senate.gov and house.gov, IP adresses, specifically visiting my own John Doe pieces. They were watching, they understood. We were heard and it is gratifying.

"Any person who, in good faith and based on objectively reasonable suspicion, makes or causes to be made, a voluntary report of covered activity to an authorized official shall be immune from civil liability under federal, state and local law for such report," the conference language says.

Democrats have yet to figure out a way to pretend to be in favor of even fighting the war on terror with law enforcement while actually doing the best to subvert it.

--Robert Stacy McCain, assistant national editor, The Washington Times

UPDATE 3:30 p.m.:

AllahPundit makes a sharp catch:

The new language requires that there be an "objectively reasonable suspicion" for the immunity to apply. That's the GOP's concession to the concerns of Bennie Thompson and the Democrats that people would use their "John Doe" immunity to go around making all sorts of paranoid claims. In essence, it leaves things in the hands of the jury: if a passenger is sued for making a report and the jury decides that their suspicion was reasonable, the passenger is immune. If not, no immunity.