By the time the flames had passed, 19 men lay dead in the nation's biggest loss of firefighters in a wildfire in 80 years.

The tragedy Sunday evening all but wiped out the 20-member Granite Mountain Hotshots, a unit based in the small town of Prescott, Prescott Fire Chief Dan Fraijo said as the last of the bodies were retrieved from the mountain. Only one member survived, and that was because he was moving the unit's truck at the time, authorities said.

The deaths plunged the town into mourning, and Arizona's governor called it "as dark a day I can remember" and ordered flags flown at half-staff.

"We are heartbroken about what happened," President Barack Obama said while on a visit to Africa. He predicted the tragedy will force government leaders to answer broader questions about how they handle increasingly destructive and deadly wildfires.

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On "Up with Steve," Business Insider's Josh Barro, Center of Social Inclusion's Maya Wiley, Politico's Maggie Haberman and Slate's Matt Yglesias discussed the possibility of Medicaid expansion in other states, which Yglesias feels is likely:

"In a lot of ways, the surprising thing about this is the fact that is has become surprising to see Republicans embrace this. When the Democrats were writing the Obamacare bill, they knew some states were more conservative than others. They knew that Republicans wouldn't be enthusiastic about this. They made the terms of Medicaid expansion extremely generous. It's all federal money and the people who live in Arizona, Michigan or wherever are paying taxes to the federal government one way or the other. Not expanding Medicaid doesn't save anyone money. It just costs your local healthcare providers and local citizens a bundle. When the bill was first passed I think no one thought this was so controversial and now Jan Brewer is doing what is simply the common sense solution and saying if the federal government is here, take my money. You take it. What is weird is so many Republicans don't see it that way."

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Simcox, 52, was arrested yesterday after detectives found probable cause that he had molested the girls, all under the age of 10, police spokesman Sgt. Tommy Thompson told Reuters. The charges stem from incidents over the last few months. Simcox has denied all charges, according to a press release from the Phoenix Police Department.

He faces two counts each of child molestation and sexual conduct with a minor, and one count of attempted child molestation.

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This raises a fascinating question. How would Cruz himself go about providing “documentary evidence” of his own citizenship?

As it happens, he was born in Canada, where his parents were working at the time. Thus, his birth certificate cannot provide any such proof. And because he claims citizenship by birth, he would never have had any reason to obtain a certificate of naturalization. According to Cruz’s official website, however, his mother was born and raised in Delaware, which is quite sufficient under the law to confer citizenship on Ted – if we take his word for it. On the other hand, what if we demanded the fabled documentary evidence?

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The legislation, sparked by the murder conviction of a Philadelphia late-term abortion provider, would restrict almost all abortions to the first 20 weeks after conception, defying laws in most states that allow abortions up to when the fetus becomes viable, usually considered to be around 24 weeks.

It mirrors 20-week abortion ban laws passed by some states, and lays further groundwork for the ongoing legal battle that abortion foes hope will eventually result in forcing the Supreme Court to reconsider the 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, that made abortion legal.

It passed 228-196, with six Democrats voting for it and six Republicans voting against it.

In the short term, the bill will go nowhere. The Democratic-controlled Senate will ignore it and the White House says the president would veto it if it ever reached his desk. The White House said the measure was "an assault on a woman's right to choose" and "a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade."

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"The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that the federal 'motor voter' law preempts Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration," he explained on his Facebook page. "This hole in federal statutory law allows non-citizens to register and thereby encourages voter fraud. I will file a commonsense amendment to the immigration bill that permits states to require I.D. before registering voters."

The Supreme Court found 7-2 that the law, which the state passed in 2004, is pre-empted by a federal law that provides voters with a form for registration and requires states to “accept and use” the form.

The New York Times explains:

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The justices voted 7-2 to throw out Arizona's voter-approved requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal "Motor Voter" voter registration law.

Federal law "precludes Arizona from requiring a federal form applicant to submit information beyond that required by the form itself," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the court's majority.

The court was considering the legality of Arizona's requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal "motor voter" registration law. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which doesn't require such documentation, trumps Arizona's Proposition 200 passed in 2004.

Arizona appealed that decision to the Supreme Court.

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“They missed me. They needed me to be here,” she said.

Rascón was returning home after nine months and 12 days in jail. She was arrested last year in a worksite raid and charged with several counts of identity theft for allegedly working with false documents.

A felony conviction would have made her ineligible for legalization should Congress pass federal immigration reform in the future. Identity theft is also considered a crime of “moral turpitude,” a deportable offense.

But after fighting the charges in court, Rascón was victorious in getting the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office to drop the felony charges.

Her case is among a handful of cases being fought by a team of attorneys who are challenging the legality of a controversial practice in Arizona: charging undocumented immigrants as felons for identity theft.

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"NARAL, Planned Parenthood and the taxpayer-funded abortion lobby is attacking me for one reason -- I'm 100 percent unapologetically pro-life and I won't back down," Franks wrote to supporters in an email, the Arizona Republic reports. "Will you contribute $25, $50, $100, or even $500 right now to help me fight back?"

“Now they will spend whatever it takes to destroy me, remove me from Congress, and stop me from protecting any more unborn children," he continued.

Franks was referring to comments he made during a House Judiciary Committee debate on his bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks. Democrats were pushing an amendment to create an exception for rape or incest, which ultimately failed. “Before, when my friends on the left side of the aisle here tried to make rape and incest the subject — because, you know, the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low,” Franks said, the Washington Post reported.

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Franks made the comments in a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, during the debate on his bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks at the national level. Franks was voicing his objections to an amendment that would create an exception for rape or incest. “Before, when my friends on the left side of the aisle here tried to make rape and incest the subject — because, you know, the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low,” he said.

The Huffington Post reports:

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“I think that he’s a moron and he proves that stupid has no specific political affiliation,” Gomez told ABC News.

“I have no idea what goes into the mind of a moron like that,” he continued. “These kinds of comments only come from a moron and they shouldn’t be tolerated one bit.”

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“Before, when my friends on the left side of the aisle here tried to make rape and incest the subject — because, you know, the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low,” Franks said, according to the Washington Post. He continued: “But when you make that exception, there’s usually a requirement to report the rape within 48 hours. And in this case that’s impossible because this is in the sixth month of gestation. And that’s what completely negates and vitiates the purpose for such an amendment.”

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The governor made a name for herself on Fox News and at national gatherings of conservatives like CPAC as a kind of uber-Tea Partyer, who eats scorpions for breakfast, wags her finger in the president's face at lunchtime, signs strict anti-immigration bills into law in the afternoon, and gives the Tea Party flag the same legal protections as the Star-Spangled Banner by bedtime.

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How ironic is this cocktail of pseudo-feminism and American exceptionalism? Deeply, given that Barto, an Arizona state senator, was explaining two years ago why the state needed a ban on race and sex-selective abortions (the race and sex being that of the fetus) -- a law the ACLU, the Maricopa County NAACP, and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum challenged in court this week in an unprecedented fashion. In other words, a law explicitly targeting and trying to limit the choices of women of color was being sold as their redemption.

In the two years since the law was passed, no one has ever been charged under it. That’s because the point was always to try to seize back the feminist mantle for the antiabortion side, and to tar abortion with both racism and sexism. (They even named it after Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass.) While sex-selective abortions are a real phenomenon in Asian countries with heavy son preference, the U.S. in general and Arizona in particular don’t have a problem with them. The complaint notes, “ The state's own statistics show no difference in birth ratio of boys and girls to Asian women as compared to other women.”

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Yanira Maldonado was greeted by well-wishers as she left the lockup on the outskirts of Nogales and hugged her husband, Gary, as officials closed the jail doors behind her.

"She lived through a nightmare," said her attorney, Jose Francisco Benitez Paz.

Maldonado was arrested by the Mexican military last week after they found nearly 12 pounds (5.4 kilograms) of pot under her seat on the commercial bus traveling from Mexico to Arizona.

The case created a nightmare scenario that has prompted outrage in the U.S. among politicians and pitted the conservative Mormon family against a judicial system that has long struggled with corruption.

Her release came hours after court officials reviewed security footage that showed her and her husband boarding a bus in Mexico with only blankets, bottles of water and her purse in hand.

The judge determined that she was no longer a suspect and all allegations against her were dropped, according to Benitez Paz.

She spoke briefly to reporters clustered outside the jail, saying she thanks God, her husband and her lawyer.

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The silent gesture offered a glimpse into what was likely a tense few days inside the deliberations room as the jury finally determined it could not agree on whether to sentence Arias to life in prison or execution for murdering her boyfriend.

After about 13 hours of deliberations over three days, the panel gave up.

Judge Sherry Stephens gave a heavy sigh as she announced a mistrial in the penalty phase of the case Thursday. A conference with the judge and attorneys was set for June 20 to determine how both sides want to proceed. In the interim, Stephens set a July 18 retrial date, sending prosecutors back to the drawing board to rehash the shocking case and details of sex and lies to another 12 people.

"This was not your typical trial," Stephens told jurors. "You were asked to perform some very difficult duties."

The jurors declined to comment and left the courthouse.

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Cruz was responding to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who harshly criticized conservative  Republicans who are holding up the Senate's ability to pass a budget. "What are we on my side of the aisle doing? We don't want a budget unless we put requirements on the conferees that are absolutely out of line and unprecedented?" McCain said on the Senate floor on Tuesday.

Ezra Klein of the Washington Post explains:

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The ban would also have severely restricted emergency abortion care for women with high-risk pregnancies, forcing doctors to wait until a woman's condition posed an immediate threat of death or catastrophic damage before offering her appropriate medical care.

In its opinion, the panel rejected what they deemed an undue legislative intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship, as the New York Times reports:

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Arias spoke to The Associated Press as part of a series of interviews with media outlets. She repeated many of her claims from previous interviews, testimony on the witness stand and her statements to the jury earlier Tuesday as she pleaded for mercy.

But she provided some new information about her case and how she believed her lawyers let her down by not calling more witnesses who could have bolstered her claims that she was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of Travis Alexander.

Arias was convicted last week of first-degree murder in the June 2008 stabbing and shooting death of her one-time lover in what prosecutors described as a cold, calculated killing carried out in a jealous rage. Arias has maintained all along it was self-defense.

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“The fever has hit California’s agricultural heartland particularly hard in recent years, with incidence dramatically increasing in 2010 and 2011,” wrote the AP’s Gosia Wozniacka. “The disease — which is prevalent in arid regions of the United States, Mexico, Central and South America — can be contracted by simply breathing in fungus-laced spores from dust disturbed by wind as well as human or animal activity.”

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