President Barack Obama dedicated the signing of health care legislation to a number of people, including his mother, S. Ann Dunham Soetoro, who, he said, "argued with insurance companies even as she battled cancer in her final days." The health care legislative process and its frenetic endgame prompted the president to postpone a trip to the country where his mother raised him for several years of his childhood: Indonesia. While his health care bill is considered by many a huge step forward, Obama is simultaneously, and with far less scrutiny, potentially taking a huge step backward with Indonesia.

News is breaking in Indonesia about the role of the Indonesian military in the murder of political activists in the province of Aceh last year, in the lead-up to elections.