Date/Time Issues with Publishing Channel Entries

We have a frustrating bug here where publishing new entries to our channels fails. When the fields are completed and the submit button is clicked, rather than being returned to the confirmation page we are sent to the EE home dashboard. The content is not published, nor is it added to the database to be edited again.

I originally suspected this was an issue with DST settings (though they’ve never happened before when we’ve made the change) as rumors from some of our writers said that manually changing the entry date on the DATE tab of a new entry to be the current system time was working around the issue, though this is failing for me today.

In localization settings the server time is set correctly, there is no offset established, and Daylight Savings Time is toggled YES. This part stands out to me as we certainly are not in DST right now, but it’s unclear if this means to indicate that or just respect those time switches automatically.

On the DATE tab of a publish page, the pre-filled time is exactly two hours ahead of our current time (in central.) The Server is on the east coast, so I’m assuming this is the time zone change + the DST being toggled to YES.

We are dated a little on v2.5.2.

I’ve also spotted some console errors on the publish page as follows:

compressed.js:39 Uncaught TypeError: $(...).tablesorter is not a function
    at HTMLDocument.<a> ([redacted]/themes/third_party/nsm_morphine_theme/scripts/compressed.js:39:204)
    at m ([redacted]/themes/javascript/compressed/jquery/jquery.js?v=1410900707:43:59)
    at Object.fireWith ([redacted]/themes/javascript/compressed/jquery/jquery.js?v=1410900707:44:311)
    at Function.ready ([redacted]/themes/javascript/compressed/jquery/jquery.js?v=1410900707:33:45)
    at HTMLDocument.A ([redacted]/themes/javascript/compressed/jquery/jquery.js?v=1410900707:42:121)

Any ideas or previous experience would be greatly appreciated.