The conventional wisdom is that Sen. Hillary Clinton has moved right, becoming hawkish in war, socially centrist and tough on immigration as she prepares for a presidential bid in 2008.

No, wait, the conventional wisdom is that Sen. Hillary Clinton has always been a social moderate and is just reiterating positions she's always held.

No, scratch that. The conventional wisdom is that Sen. Hillary Clinton is a socialist ideologue who secretly hates the military and wants to create a nanny state through universal health care and government-run day care.

Which of these is true principally depends on which you want to be true, as one can find some evidence for all. Clinton is, if nothing else, reliably flexible. What she personally believes seems to depend largely on the audience.

When in Mexico . (ITALICS) Te quiero, you guys!

That's both the beauty and the problem of Hillary Clinton. She's whatever she needs to be to advance the only agenda to which she is unwaveringly loyal: the power of Hillary Clinton. She puts one in mind of a delighted self-portraitist, always discovering new textures and palettes. And like all politicians, she benefits from the Uzi-style news cycle that numbs Americans into sensory exhaustion and glazed-eye passivity.

Who can remember the last thing anybody said?

Illegal immigration, one of the issues Clinton glommed onto after Sept. 11, is a case in point. If you caught Clinton's WABC Radio interview back in February 2003, you heard her say that she is "you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants."

This quote has been resurrected repeatedly to demonstrate Clinton's shift to the right, especially as a direct comparison to President George W. Bush, who seems more interested in schmoozing Mexican President Vicente Fox and, like Clinton, attracting Hispanic voters than in taking seriously the problem of sealing our porous borders.

How bad is it? The day of the London bombings, while the world was riveted on body counts, the Texas Border Sheriffs' Coalition was meeting in Del Rio, Texas, where those living closest to the problem described plausible and sickening doomsday scenarios. With 6,000 to 7,000 trucks daily crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, we are extremely vulnerable to a deadly attack, they warned.

Of greatest concern among illegals are non-Mexicans. Typically, Mexicans are returned home while non-Mexicans are taken to U.S. detention centers, where limited space means most are released and (insert whoopee cushion here) ordered to return for detention hearings. Continued...