The ad targets Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who is running in a special election for an open congressional seat against a tea partyer named Craig Huey. Here is the ad (NSFW):

The Hahn campaign has blasted the spot as “incredibly offensive and sexist to all women,” and the state GOP distanced itself from Turn Right USA.

When I asked Ehlinger his response, he said that the ad is raising an important issue and that his critics could “suck it.” The central allegation of the ad, by the way, relies on a debunked news report about Hahn’s alleged support for a gang intervention task force.

Ehlinger described the ad as “very low-budget” and said that he and two friends had put up their own money to form Turn Right USA and hire actors for the spot.

“Our basic goal is to name names and take no prisoners,” Ehlinger says of Turn Right USA. “We’re going to start raising funds and making crazy viral ads every month or two” in races around the country.

Ehlinger has also created two feature-length films, including one called Hive Mind, described on his website this way:

Hive Mind is a post-apocalyptic feature film about the last man on Earth, conservative talk show host Doug Trench, a.k.a. The Trench Mouth. Humanity has been assimilated by the Hive Mind, a collective consciousness that turns everyone into zombies. Trench, hidden in a bunker for twenty years, now running out of food and booze, cigars and coffee, and the last vestiges of his sanity, flips on his radio transmitter one last time to fight the mind of the Hive with the only weapon at his disposal: words!

But here’s the brutal truth, apart from the politics: Most Americans are not free. A telling example: In the Mercatus rankings the two states blessed by the highest freedom quotient boast a combined population of a little over 2 million — South Dakota and New Hampshire (the latter of which, admittedly, went for Obama in 2008). The bottom three states were New York, New Jersey and California, which have a combined population of over 65 million.

Sixty-five million Americans in just three states cower under a totalitarian shadow! That’s a little distressing!

New York is the least free by a considerable margin. This will surprise few residents of the Empire state. In order from the bottom, New York is followed by New Jersey, California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Unfortunately, these states make up a substantial portion of the total American population.

I feel the authors’ pain. Once you have defined “freedom” according to a specific set of criteria it must be just a tad confounding to realize how many Americans live in a state of relative slavery. Note the snark: “Few residents of the Empire state” will be surprised at their lack of freedom. And yet: 19 million Americans still call themselves New Yorkers. Surely, this is a great bafflement.

Of course, we can also nitpick about what really constitutes true “freedom.” For the authors, a mandate to buy healthcare insurance is a dastardly imposition on individual rights. (The authors are working within a construct defined by the political philosopher Norman Barry, “[A] belief in the efficiency and morality of unhampered markets, the system of private property, and individual rights and a deep distrust of taxation, egalitarianism, compulsory welfare, and the power of the state.”)

But from my perspective, not having access to universal healthcare is an imposition on my freedom. The fact that for most Americans healthcare is tied to one’s employer is a dread shackle limiting the freedom of movement of every worker. How much more liberated would we all be if we could switch jobs or work for ourselves without the fear that at any moment we might be crippled by an exorbitantly expensive health emergency? Similarly, a state requirement that employers offer paid parental leave (another black mark against California) clearly frees me to be a better father to my newborn. I’d really love to see what would happen to internal migration patterns in the United States if all the big blue states had universal single-payer healthcare, while everyone else was left at the mercy of a completely unregulated private market. That civil war would end rather quickly, I suspect.

To their credit, the authors point to an essay written by Nick Gillespie in 2005 that gives some insight into the mystery of self-hating liberals: “Live Free or Die of Boredom: Is ‘economic freedom’ just another word for nothing left to do?”

There’s just not as much going on in South Dakota as there is in San Francisco, Herb Caen’s infamous “Baghdad by the Bay.” This fact is indisputable. I am personally intimately acquainted with the environs of southern New Hampshire, metropolitan New York and the San Francisco Bay Area — and I love them all equally deeply — but I can tell you without fear of contradiction that the food, entertainment and cultural options are far more numerous, diverse and, quite often, qualitatively superior in New York and California than they are in my favorite live-free-or-die state. Which is not at all to say that New Hampshire is lacking in charm or strong points. Bucolic splendor has its virtues; I enjoy listening to the loons cackle while canoeing about Nubanusit Lake as much as anyone. But I need more.

The millions who cluster on the coasts delight in their thriving arts communities and smorgasbord of dining options and the sheer intellectual stimulation that accrues from the helter-skelter activity of a big city. Many of us have agreed to an implicit trade-off: We’ll put up with the impositions of big government because we are getting something essential out of the deal. Freedom is not a zero sum game. And you know, some of us might not even think that paying high taxes to support a robust safety net for those less fortunate is the worst thing that ever happened. We might even pride ourselves on it.

As best I understand it, the authors explain the persistence of these population clusters as holdover relics from the days when the surrounding regions enjoyed dynamic economic growth under less regulated regimes. So San Francisco, for example, exploded because of the benefits that accrued from its peerless logistics — the Bay — and its proximity to gold, timber and agricultural resources. But now that the state has imposed its overweening presence into everyone’s private affairs, the citizens of California will supposedly flee to more welcoming climes. Idaho (the fourth freest state) or bust! And the culture will follow.

[A]s we noted during many of the talks we delivered after the first edition of the index appeared, we fully expect people in the freer states to develop and benefit from the kinds of institutions (such as symphonies and museums) and amenities (better restaurants and cultural attractions) seen in some of the older cities on the coasts (in less-free states such as California and New York) as they grow and prosper.

Perhaps so. Certainly, there has been a significant population shift from the Rust Belt and Northeast to the South and Southwest, which might lend support to that thesis. California’s population did increase its population by 4 million from 2000-2010, but even that represented the slowest rate of growth in many decades. And to be fair, the restaurant options in the New Hampshire town I know the best, Peterborough, have undoubtedly improved over the last 20 years.

Then again, I would say the same is true for Berkeley, Calif. Time hasn’t stopped here, either. So even while the heartland (that “bastion of freedom,” according to the authors) catches up, the liberal coastal enclaves aren’t standing still. The food was pretty damn good when I arrived in 1986 — but it’s even better now. The cultural opportunities are near infinite, and there’s no real reason to expect that to change. There’s a self-sustaining dynamism to large cities and population centers — a greater range of employment opportunities and employment niches that feed upon and reinforce themselves. Berkeley, for example, positively seethes with psychotherapists, all of whom are presumably busily charging $150 an hour to talk patients through their paradoxical willingness to sacrifice their inalienable freedoms for the privilege of being able to buy locally sourced organic arugula at the farmers’ market around the corner. (No one ever said it was easy to live under the shadow of totalitarian oppression, even if the coffee is better.) And you better believe those psychotherapists constitute a major source of arugula demand themselves. And so it goes.

How the rest of the 21st century plays out is anyone’s guess. Maybe California’s current fiscal troubles really do presage an uninterrupted fall from grace. Maybe the burgeoning South will establish a political hegemony that delivers the ultimate libertarian utopia of freedom-loving Tea Party dreams. Or maybe, just maybe, the citizens who swell the ranks of rising urban centers in Virginia and North Carolina and Texas — diverse, dynamic, conceivably interested in better healthcare for themselves and their children — will find themselves beginning to make the same trade-offs that New Yorkers and Californians once agreed to. The country seemed headed in one direction in 2008 and another in 2010 — I certainly won’t pretend to know where it’s going next.

But one thing I do know: There are a lot of Californians and New Yorkers who don’t think it’s “unfortunate” to be at the bottom of the Mercatus Center list. On the contrary, we wouldn’t have it any other way. And being Americans, I guess we’re free to feel that way.

The lawyers insisted that Walker, who was chief judge of the Northern District of California at the time, should have recused himself or disclosed his relationship because he and his partner stood to personally benefit from the verdict.

“It now appears that Judge Walker, at the time the complaint was filed and throughout this litigation, occupied precisely those same shoes as the plaintiffs,” attorney Charles Cooper said.

Ware, who inherited the Proposition 8 case from the now-retired Walker, asked why Cooper assumed Walker had any intention of getting married, just because he was in a decade-old relationship.

“I’m asking you to tell me what fact you would have the court rely on to suggest that Judge Walker wanted to change, not maintain his relationship?” Ware asked.

Cooper conceded he did not know Walker’s outlook on marriage. Still, he insisted the judge’s failure to reveal the relationship until 10 months after his ruling made his silence suspect and his marriage plans an appropriate subject of inquiry.

During the lengthy back-and-forth that followed, Ware asked, “So if a reasonable person thought a black judge should recuse himself from a civil rights case, that would be enough?”

Cooper replied, “No, your honor.”

Ware asked why not.

“A reasonable person would not consider that black judge, any more than a white judge, for that reason alone someone biased or impartial,” the lawyer said.

“I agree with you,” Ware said. “Our test of reasonableness in our country will not allow us to discriminate on the basis of race, gender or sexual orientation.”

Theodore Boutrous Jr., part of the legal team representing the two gay couples who filed the lawsuit against Proposition 8, called Cooper’s arguments “frivolous, offensive and deeply unfortunate.”

“Just because people are gay and lesbian and in a relationship doesn’t mean they are all alike,” Boutrous said. “He is just engaging in this stereotyping that everyone is the same. … There is no evidence that Judge Walker intended to get married. None.”

Boutrous also derided Cooper’s assertion that it was Walker’s relationship status and not his sexual orientation that called his impartiality into question.

“It’s not some news flash that Judge Walker was in a same-sex relationship,” Boutrous said. “They are targeting Judge Walker because he is gay.”

Walker publicly revealed after he stepped down from the bench in February that he is in a 10-year relationship with a man. Rumors that he was gay had circulated before and after he presided over the trial in early 2010.

Turning his attention to Boutrous, Ware asked if objective observers would be wrong to assume a judge who is a member of a minority group whose issues are at stake in a trial could not be fair.

“If the court did accept that Judge Walker was intending to marry and therefore was on an even floor with the plaintiffs here, that would not lead a reasonable person to question his impartiality?” the judge asked.

Boutrous replied: “I do not think it would or should. I think it has to be more direct.”

Ware pushed harder. “It sounds like the next statement you would make is there are no circumstances that would cause Judge Walker’s impartiality to be questioned in this case,” he said.

Ware revealed at the hearing’s outset that he had presided at a same-sex marriage during the brief period in 2008 when the ceremonies were legal in the state.

He said the ruling by Walker, who did not attend Monday’s hearing, raised important questions and called it the first case in which a judge’s same-sex relationship had led to calls for disqualification.

“There was probably the same kind of struggle when race or gender were the issue,” Ware said.

Many legal scholars do not expect Ware to overturn Walker’s decision. They point out that having a judge’s impartiality questioned because he is gay is new territory, but efforts to get women judges thrown off gender discrimination cases or Hispanic judges removed from immigration cases have failed.

Ware also heard arguments on whether he should prohibit Walker from using videotaped recordings of the trial in public speeches. Cooper said Walker’s post-retirement use of the recordings violated a U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring the trial from being broadcast beyond the federal courthouse in San Francisco.

Ware said he would issue a written ruling at a later date but suggested he was disinclined to prevent his former colleague from making personal use of the videos.

Ware said Walker had been given the videos as a parting gift during a “passing the gavel” ceremony.

“It was done under my auspices,” he said. So I want to disclose that in case you wish to make an argument that somehow having presided over that event … I should recuse myself.”

Mehserle’s attorney, Michael Rains, declined to comment Thursday on his client’s pending release. Rains recently said in published reports that Mehserle is ready to move on with his life.

But there could be backlash, as another series of rallies and protests will be held in both Los Angeles and Oakland before and after Mehserle’s release.

Mehserle, 29, was convicted last July in the shooting death of Oscar Grant on an Oakland train station platform on New Year’s Day 2009. The incident was recorded by bystanders, and video posted online showed the Bay Area Rapid Transit officer firing a single bullet into the back of Grant, 22, as he lay face down after being pulled off a train for allegedly fighting.

The videos were subsequently used as evidence during Mehserle’s murder trial.

Facing a second-degree murder charge and a maximum 14 years in prison, Mehserle tearfully testified at his trial that he meant to use his stun gun instead of his .40-caliber pistol.

Jurors found that while Mehserle didn’t mean to kill Grant, his behavior was so negligent that it was criminal. He received a two-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter.

Grant’s uncle, Cephus “Bobby” Johnson, said Thursday that the shooting still tears at his family more than two years later.

“What really hurts is that we are just expected to get on with our lives. How can we?” Johnson said. “We’ve been dealt with a racist criminal justice system that has denied our true rights to justice.”

Johnson added that a civil lawsuit filed against Mehserle, BART and two of its officers remains scheduled to be heard by a jury sometime this year.

The shooting still continues to spark debate, racial tensions and occasional protests that turn violent. Last fall, more than 150 people were arrested in Oakland hours after Mehserle’s sentencing.

A town hall meeting is scheduled in Los Angeles on Saturday, and a protest is scheduled in Oakland on Sunday. On Monday, Grant supporters in both cities plan to march to their respective U.S. attorneys’ offices and demand that the Department of Justice look into possible federal prosecution.

“I hope what happens is that we stand together, share our experiences and speak to the injustices that occur in our communities,” Johnson said. “Voices can be heard when there’s unity.”

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said Thursday that she is encouraging peaceful demonstrations as police will be ready for any disruptions.

“Our thoughts are with the family and friends of Oscar Grant who are still grieving their tragic loss. Nothing can bring back their loved one,” Quan said in a written statement. “Although we expect peaceful gatherings, we do not anticipate nor will we tolerate vandalism or violence.”

“What we’ve said is we’re going to move forward with this plan and we’ll ask for more time if we need it,” Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate said at a news conference.

The latest count shows California’s 33 prisons housing 143,565 inmates in space designed for fewer than 80,000, meaning the prisons are at 180 percent of their design capacity.

In an order late last month, the Supreme Court gave California two years to remove more than 33,000 inmates after the justices ruled easing congestion is the only way to improve unconstitutionally poor inmate medical care.

The administration’s response outlined all the steps the state has taken in recent years to reduce its prison population, including sending about 10,000 inmates to other states. But its compliance with the recent order hinges almost entirely on plans that Brown signed into law earlier this year to shift responsibility for thousands of lower-level inmates to counties.

The shift cannot take effect unless local governments get the money to provide jail cells and rehabilitation services, and funding for that remains stalled in the state Legislature. Republican lawmakers have blocked Brown’s proposal for an extension of temporary tax increases that are set to expire by the end of the month.

Renewing the recent increases in the vehicle, sales and personal income taxes is essential to funding Brown’s plan to shift low-level offenders to county jurisdiction.

The Supreme Court had indicated that it might consider a request for a delay in its order, which includes benchmarks in reducing overcrowding along the way, but Cate said it was too soon for that.

“It would be irresponsible to say we’re going to do nothing, go back to the same three judges and cross our fingers,” Cate said.

Nick Warner, legislative director of the California State Sheriffs’ Association, said he hadn’t seen the state’s response to the court and could not immediately comment.