The Clinton camp is about to get control of the tabs.

Update: HuffPo's Sam Stein on John Edwards' shift to the right on immigration, which still seems pretty tentative. The genius of the driver's license issue for Edwards is that it gives him a way to be tougher on illegals than Hillary is without requiring him to do anything as heretical as opposing "comprehensive" legalization. Hillary was very foolish to give him this opening. [She should have dissed Spitzer?--ed Yes.] ... The Edwards campaign is actually highlighting his near-mumbled rejection (on This Week) of the Spitzer plan ...  

More: Jim Pinkerton says the issue won't stop her in the primary, but he senses a Willie Hortonesque vulnerability in November. He should know (he was George H.W. Bush's opposition research director during the 1988 campaign).

... Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton reminds me a lot of Dukakis. As he was two decades ago, she's from a big state, has a lot of money, is ahead in the polls - and she's been grievously injured.

Alert reader L.S. notes one significant Dukakis/Clinton difference: Dukakis, Pinkerton notes, had "a tin ear" on Willie Horton and the prison furlough issue that "should have been a warning sign to Democrats." In contrast, Hillary clearly knew that Spitzer's licenses-for-illegals plan was unpopular--that's why she hemmed and hawed rather than endorsing it. Her problem wasn't a tin ear so much as an unwillingness to stiff an important liberal constituency--and a failure to anticipate that it might be necessary. It's not clear that this is a huge improvement. 11:28 A.M.

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... on the other hand, Hillary Clinton's never tried a defense as specious and weaselly as LAT columnist Tim Rutten's (in an attempt to avoid an embarrassing correction). ... If she did, even Huma  would laugh at her! [Cheapest Huma reference I've seen yet--ed Huma=comedy gold] ... 2:47 A.M.

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The yahoos' border fence is working: An update from the Houston Chronicle, which notes the impact on a once-booming smuggling haven in Palomas, Mexico:

"The fence has destroyed the economy here," said Fabiola Cuellar, a hardware-store clerk on the main street of Palomas who used to sell supplies to the throngs heading north from here. "Things are going back to the way they were before."

Where the fence has been completed, "it tends to elicit satisfied nods from Americans and resigned shrugs from Mexicans," saysreporter Dudley Althaus. Then there's this anecdote, from the principal of a Mexican elementary school that abuts the fence:

Then [the principal, Armando] Villasana told of a daydreaming young student who gazed out the window at the new wall during class last month.

Villasana asked the boy, What are you thinking about?

"They have built us a wall of shame, professor," the student answered.

'How is that?" Villasana asked.

"It's shame because people have to leave our country to find work," the boy responded.