What we are talking about today is not a left vs. right thing but a basic democracy thing. It is a truth that is so self-evident that public officials of all persuasions get it and loftily praise it. Or at least pay lip service to it when caught in the spotlight.

It is this: Democracy is like most flora and fauna in that it is quintessentially phototropic. It thrives when exposed to light and it cannot survive when forced into prolonged darkness.

And yet, most public officials prefer to perform their public business in places where the light doesn't shine - except when they choose to throw the switch. The problem all officials discover is that their hand doesn't control the switch. The light can be switched on or off by any of the countless hands of the information octopi known by the misleadingly collective noun as "The Media." It is misleading because the hands are competing rather than conspiring. That's what makes democracy work.

Public officials seem consumed by desires to control - by coaxing, cajoling, coercing, cracking and even crushing - unseen hands to keep them from shining a spotlight on a snafu concealed by darkness.

Consider the nonparallel, in fact, crisscrossing, careers of two public servants whose paths never figured to cross but who both acted to promote darkness over light: Eric Holder and Richard Nixon.

Nixon was but one of many officials who used claims of "national security" to try to hide misdeeds - in his case, crimes. He undid his presidency by plotting with top advisers to get the CIA to tell the FBI not to investigate his reelection campaign-financed burglary of Democratic Party headquarters by claiming it was a matter of national security. Watergate was a maze of scandals and crimes revealed by journalists.

Holder seemed like a reform-minded attorney general who would implement President Obama's promise to give Americans "change you can believe in." But this week, Holder convinced us we've been shortchanged. He reverted to the mindset of his predecessors - moving to compel journalist James Risen to reveal the confidential source or sources who leaked information for his 2006 book, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration." Risen is a New York Times reporter but the information at issue - about a covert CIA effort to disrupt Iran's nuclear program - appeared only in his book.

When Risen and a colleague won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for exposing the Bush-Cheney administration's warrant-less electronic surveillance, then-Sen. Barack Obama called the effort illegal. A Bush-Cheney investigation of their sources produced no subpoenas. After Risen's book came out, the administration subpoenaed him in a grand jury probe. Risen refused to name his sources and the grand jury term ended with no action taken.

Now this: In a stunning misjudgment, Obama's attorney general has renewed the probe, subpoenaing Risen to compel him to name his leakers or potentially be jailed. The information alleged that in the Bush years, the CIA gave an Iran double agent nuclear blueprints that contained a flaw. But the flaw was later discovered. So the plans may have helped the Iranians.

But that isn't the issue here. The issue is about how democracy must work: Government officials must make policies openly and keep their own secrets secret. A journalist's job is to tell the public what it needs to know about what officials are doing while on our payroll.

"If anyone is to blame for an improper leak, it is the leaker, not the leakee," said author and blogger Ronald Goldfarb, who ran grand jury investigations in the Kennedy Justice Department and wrote the 2009 book "In Confidence: When to Protect Secrecy and When to Require Disclosure." (Required disclosure: Goldfarb is also my literary agent.)"

Where's the change this administration promised? Where is the policy of openness and freedom of information? ... What is the attorney general thinking?"

What the Senate must start thinking now is that it must follow the House's lead by enacting a media shield law to protect democracy by permitting journalists to shine their spotlights for us all.

Martin Schram writes political analysis for Scripps Howard News Service.