"a hotbed of cold feet."

George Will in National Post October 9, 2001 (a complicated metaphor applying to U.S. Senate Democrats over Iraq in 1991 what was said of "All Souls College, Oxford at the time of the 1956 Suez crisis")

“the words itched more than they tickled.”

Larry Hill in Maclean’s August 27, 2001

"Include me out."

Sam Goldwyn, quoted in Gilbert! Magazine Vol. 4 #3 (December 2000)

"What President Bush will need is an agenda that catches fire without blowing up."

National Review Dec. 18, 2000 [if the comment had a specified author I failed to write it down]

She dismisses an implausible claim as “like a clock that strikes 13. It throws into question all that has gone before it and all that follows.”

Arianna Huffington in National Review April 5, 1999

"It’s time to paint your butt white and run with the antelope. Stop arguing and do as you’re told."

James Langton’s guide to expressions British leaders might encounter from George W. Bush, in the Sunday Telegraph, quoted in the Ottawa Citizen Dec. 17 2000

"an open mind is salutary, but one whose hinge is off?"

"H. Smith" [according to my detailed but now sadly incomprehensible note as to its origin]

"a hurricane in a pawnshop"

Tom Carson (specifically re Jane Fonda's life, reviewing Fonda's My Life So Far) in The Atlantic Monthly July-August 2005