"Terrorist 'chatter' " is like a Rorshach test - one hears what one wants to hear out of it. Steeling one's self in a Manachean (read: paranoid) mindset for a long time, looking for "problems" to confront, with a need to justify the ever-expanding "security" bureaucracy, results in security-by-"gut feeling".

The world of myriad plotters aching to blow up airliners becomes one's "reality" if fixated upon long enough ... refilling 6 oz toothpaste tubes (though NOT two 3 oz ones!) and cleverly mixing the contents with those of seal-intact .5 L Arrowhead water bottles in airside (if not midair) lavatories for hours under far from ideal conditions becomes a "grave risk", rather than a highly remote possibility (at best).

I don't believe it's about politics (at this point, though it may have been in the past), but that Those Who Make Policy are caught in a delusion from which they cannot be pried for months to come.