[Corin Stormhands]

a balrog in the woodpile???

Ruh Roh! Based on that other thread...

I'd never heard that term.

[HairOfTheDog]

It's meaning isn't clear to me....

I looked it up and it seems to mean "an obstacle or fly in the ointment" but I can't figure what the root of it would have been.

[JenB]

Never? Wow... I've seen it in a few really old books, like from the 1970s... (just kidding, but I have seen it in older literature)

This seems like a rather different case from that flight attendant thing the other month! Sheesh, what a maroon.

[My back yard]

I'm not sure of the origin of the term, but from my understanding it is a suggestion that a person is of a mixed lineage. Like saying you have a skeleton in the closet, or some other secret in your past. the context the senator used it makes no sense, except as a really nasty insult. I think he did mean to say fly in the ointment. In that case, the guy is nuts as well as a bigot, and needs severe counseling, and medication too. And a boot.

[Argh]

It was used somewhere in that ancient satire of LOTR, Harvard Lampoon's Bored of the Rings. One of the few things I remember from it, having read it in 1971 or so.