Coming Out Swinging  Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is
often described, not entirely without reason, as a somewhat
passive and non-confrontational leader — an accidental
politician, with the real strings being pulled, behind the
scenes, by Sonia Gandhi. (Manmohan may wear the Pagri, but Sonia
wears the pants, as it were.)  However, in the speech he gave
yesterday in the Indian Parliament before the Confidence Vote
(which the UPA government won, by about 20 votes), Manmohan
Singh showed no signs of meekness or passivity. Indeed, his
take-down of BJP leader L.K. Advani is rhetorically ferocious. I
was impressed:  “The Leader of Opposition, Shri L.K. Advani has
chosen to use all manner of abusive objectives to describe my
performance. He has described me as the weakest Prime Minister,
a nikamma PM, and of having devalued the office of PM. To
fulfill his ambitions, he has made at least three attempts to
topple our government. But on each occasion his astrologers have
misled him. This pattern, I am sure, wil