Mailing the story:

Last week when releasing the Linux 2.6.35-rc2 kernel, Linus was upset with the number of late merges and other commits that were receiving pull requests in the Linux 2.6.35 kernel development cycle when the work should instead be now about bug and regression fixes. As such, Linus was going to be much more stringent about what he would allow within the Linux 2.6.35-rc3 kernel and he has indeed followed his tighter rules.