I'm not entirely sure but this may be somewhat my "fault". Yesterday I noticed two different tweets in the public timeline that were attached to protected accounts. I don't think they were an effect of the accounts going from public->private since I caught them right after they showed up and saw the accounts were protected. I emailed Twitter at 4:36pm and then another one at 5:16pm (EST). That *may* be the reason.
That said, I'm glad I'm not the only one noticing that the public timeline was frozen. I thought I was crazy for a while yesterday and then started looking at other options (none of which have worked out that well). Sanjay
