Road Show

House Republicans, bereft of accomplishment and burdened with an increasingly unpopular war, have hit upon a new strategy for retaining their majority in the fall elections. They plan to churn up the fear, frustration and resentment at illegal immigration deeply embedded in their conservative base through a summer series of hearings that will take their harsh border-control bill on the road. Their constituents and the nation as a whole would be far better served if the lawmakers spent their summer in Washington, ironing out a compromise with the Senate that takes the practical and humane approach to immigration reform that is critical to strengthening border security.

Road show release party The lowdown -- The Swing States Road Show, a politically active group composed of several WAMMIE Award-winning instrumentalists, will play the Cat's Eye Pub in Fells Point on Tuesday. The concert will celebrate the release of the group's latest album, Housecleaning. If you go -- The pub is at 1730 Thames St. The music starts at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. Admission is free for the 21-and-over show. For more information, call 410-276-9866 or visit catseyepub.com. ST. PATRICK'S BENEFIT AT LOYOLA The lowdown -- Bring in St. Patty's Day with a bang.

WASHINGTON - A three-ring circus on Social Security reform was on display this week - the first ring in Galveston, Texas, the second outside the U.S. Capitol, the third inside at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee. In Galveston, ringmaster George W. Bush held one of his final performances in a 60-stops-in-60-days road show peddling his pitch for "personal investment accounts" bankrolled by Social Security payroll taxes. As always, he preached to a choir of the invited faithful, telling his audience that Americans around the country are waking up to the virtues of his scheme but that the politicians "in Washington, D.C."

WASHINGTON - If politics were show business, you could say that President Bush's planned 60-day road tour to sell the diverting of Social Security taxes into the stock market is now into its second act. Mr. Bush resumed the second half of his Social Security traveling show in West Virginia yesterday before taking an intermission to attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II in Rome. He did so with still another of his repetitively boring pitches before another meticulously crafted "town meeting" of pre-selected guests who offer no dissent from his scheme.

BILL COSBY'S traveling road show on moral values came to Baltimore this week and brought down the house. During an appearance before 1,400 parents, teachers and students at W.E.B. DuBois High School, Mr. Cosby was greeted with several standing ovations as he talked about touchy subjects such as out-of-wedlock births, absentee fathers and a greater need for personal responsibility among African-Americans. This was hardly the firestorm he created several months ago at a 50th anniversary celebration of Brown vs. Board of Education, when he took lower-income black parents to task for, among other things, caring more about expensive sneakers than books for their kids.

DERRY, N.H. - The George W. Bush for President Show is now playing in a state near you, and it's a marvel of organization and affirmation. When the president flew into this southern New Hampshire Republican stronghold the other afternoon for what was billed as a town meeting, the state party and the Bush state campaign team assembled a crowd of nearly 2,000 faithful to greet him, packing a large gym. Town hall meetings are a storied tradition in New...

WASHINGTON - The Securities and Exchange Commission may revise its rules on initial stock offerings to modernize the 1930s-era guidelines, agency commissioners and staff said yesterday. The SEC staff is drafting changes to reduce restrictions on public comments when companies go public, an issue that almost derailed Google Inc.'s $3.47 billion offering last week when Playboy published an interview with the company's founders. The SEC rulemaking may also address road shows, sales meetings where small investors are often excluded, agency officials said.

From the beginning of this girls soccer season, most coaches in the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland pegged the Institute of Notre Dame as an up-and-comer in the A Conference. Yesterday, the Indians proved they are already here. With a 2-0 victory at No. 2 McDonogh, the No. 8 Indians cracked what, for the past few years, has been a four-team race atop the A Conference with St. Mary's, Notre Dame Prep, McDonogh and John Carroll. The win, on goals from Jen Moberly and Stephanie Petrides, was IND's first over McDonogh since 1996.

"What is that?" Gary Jones of Newport News, Va., blurted out to his children as they cruised past the Kiln Creek Shopping Center in York County, Va. "We have to stop and check it out." It's not often that one passes a bus painted in candy colors that only the Partridge Family could love with a giant yellow baby chicken on the roof. The Jones family had encountered the "Peeps Fun Bus," which is undertaking a year-long, coast-to-coast caravan to mark the 50th anniversary of the little marshmallow chicks that are popular around Easter.

Say you were an advertising executive eager to promote your brand or product to the most coveted demographic - young people. You'd be looking for the most effective way to make them aware of what you have to sell, and you'd have a variety of options: TV, newspapers, radio, magazines and so on. But all of those media require the target audience to come to you. What if you could go to them? Perhaps you'd do what Major League Baseball, Subway and Kellogg's are doing this summer and sponsor a big-name concert tour.