Slow news day? Or end of the world as we know it?

I haven't had the chance to get online until this afternoon, so one of the first places I went to catch up on things was Memorandum, usually a very useful summary of what stories are getting tracked where.

Today, though, it seemed to be all about the campaign horse race, political gotchas, and just silliness. (With luck, by the time you get to the site, it may have moved on to more interesting stories, so to capture today's news cycle in all its lack of grandeur, I grabbed a screen capture. Click the image at right to enlarge):

I mean, really:

• The Clinton and Obama campaigns accusing one another of plagiarism?


• Ron Paul pin-up calendars?


• William Kristol on why Democrats should read Rudyard Kipling?

This is it? I stay away from the news for 10 hours and this is what I find waiting for me?

If the takeaway is that no one's nuked anybody today, and the earth hasn't spun out of its orbit, so stuff like this is all that's left to report on, then I guess that's good to know.

On the other hand, if America's most enterprising journalists--online and off--couldn't find anything more important than this to write about today, then I'm worried even more than usual about how ill-informed even informed Americans are.

Perhaps the news, like banks and schools, took President's Day off.