Democracies End When They Are Too Democratic. So says Andrew Sullivan, writing for New York on May 1, 2016. Plenty provocative, which is just what anyone who has read Andrew Sullivan expects. Deep, deep stuff, but well worth the time!

From the campaigns, Amy Davidson has Ready or Not for the New Yorker. The sub-header tells the story: “Paul Ryan’s Donald Trump Problem.” For The Atlantic Ron Fournier has written Ted Cruz Deserves Some Credit. Mr. Fournier’s thesis? “What if more politicians wander away from their sympathetic crowds to engage directly with people of opposing views?” (Still and a*shole, and I’m not referring to Mr. Fournier!”) Finally, and this piece really resonated for me, take a look at This Is What a Republican Attack on Bernie Sanders Would Look Like by Michelle Goldberg for Slate. Really interesting material about why Senator Sanders would be an electoral disaster, and why what makes him problematic has not been an issue yet.

Emma Roller contributes to the New York Times. Here’s her piece, Life as a Presidential Could-Have-Been. Ms. Roller focuses on “could-have-beens” Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Frank Bruni totally nails the terribly sad story of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert—sad, as in “crying” sad, and sad as in former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is just a sad f*ck who ought to crawl back under whatever rock covers the hole in which he belongs—in The Many Faces of Dennis Hastert, written for the New York Times on May 1. Dennis Hastert will serve 15 months in a federal penitentiary for violating currency disclosure laws in connection with paying hush money to keep under wraps his abuse of young men when he was a high school wrestling coach. Sadly, I suspect the public will give this incident no significant attention.

The James Beard Awards are the Oscars of the foodie world. While most of the awards focus on restaurants, chefs, and the restaurant business, there are also awards for writing. Here from Longform.org is The 2016 James Beard Award Winners, a collection of seven award-winning essays. Some tasty stuff for the mind.

If anybody truly matters—living now—in relation to the bialy, it’s Mimi Sheraton.* Food writer extraordinaire on many platforms, she wrote The Bialy Eaters and, with it, made the the bagel’s better, poorer relation a Thing. I got into bialys—baking them, for there was nowhere in Tucson where I could buy one—when I happened onto Life, Death & Bialys: A Father/Son Baking Story by Dylan Schaffer. The big name when it comes to producing bialys is Kossar’s at 367 Grand St. in lower Manhattan. Robert Sietsma has the skinny on the Kossar’s remodel in Mimi Sheraton Tries Kossar’s Bialys Post-Renovation and, in honor of the passing of Pesach, here’s a dozen I made, a while back.

*True it is that when I Googled bialy my March 7, 2014 post was on the first screen.