HOC FODIO!

Your friend is in part correct. One, I have not done that much Latin translation since high school. Two, most of my practice is going Latin to English and not the reverse, which really blows for idioms. It does, however, inform the way I chose to reconstruct things. I also learned a lot of my Latin from poetry which plays fast and loose with the details, but wrings every drop out of the deeper connotations of words and grammatical structures. This approach was immensely useful when my brother and I did an on the fly translation of the Bayeux Tapestry to the approval of our crowd.

On FODERE, I typed "fourth" by accident, instead of "third". The sentiment still holds. Robert's error was assuming that the 1st person, sing, present form of FODERE (FODIO) mirrored REGERE (REGO).

On STERCUS, your friend is right on the form of the accusative is STERCUS (I'll change the title) due to the noun being third conjugation neuter. If I were to defend my mistake, which I am not, I would claim poetic license to change the noun's gender in order to emphasize the masculinity of the bull.

I do, however, defend using the preposition IN with the accusative. This form indicates that the topic is being discussed. We are discussing its nature. It is receiving the action of the discussion. DE + ablative implies that the discussion is emitting from that object, as in DE GUSTIBUS NON EST DISPUTADUM (there is no disputing about taste). The non-existent disputation is not about the nature of taste itself, but about how the use of individual tastes alters the individual's perception of the item under discussion. If Frankfurt's article was on how "bullshit" is used rhetorically, as opposed to exploring its defintion and nature, then I would have favored DE.

As STERCUS not only means manure, but has derogatory implications, specifying the animal emitting the manure TAURI is probably superfluous. I thought, however, it would provide an anchor for those without any Latin. My preferred form would have been IN STERCUS.