The reliance on e-mails as definitive, incriminating evidence of chicanery was once a given, but that didn't last long. Social media have now damaged the credibility of such e-mails, as the monumental Bear Stearns fraud verdict shows.

E-mails shooting back and forth during 2007 between Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin looked like bullets that hit the target, damning the two hedge-fund goniffs on charges of securities fraud. (See my previous item for details from the indictment.)

Such careless and stupid e-mails revealing crooked behavior doomed previous goniffs, like Jack Abramoff and his henchmen in the infamous Wampumgate corruption scandal of the Bush era. (The unmasking of that scandal was one of John McCain's finest moments, if you recall.) The e-mails wove a fascinating web of corruption extended to the religious right, several congressmen, and Karl Rove. And the e-mails not only brought Abramoff and crew to justice, but they forced congressmen out of their jobs.

But this is a new time, and texting and twittering have now convinced many people that e-mails are also thoughts on the fly that aren't necessarily proof or even strong evidence. That's obviously because we all now rue some of the thoughts on the fly that we text and twitter. And texting and twittering are even more careless and less thought-out than e-mails.

So cases built on e-mails no longer have the cred they once had.

But the problem is this: Those thoughts on the fly are often really good evidence of malicious or illegal intent. Twittering and texting have merely inured the common folk, blinding them to that fact. Just because someone twitters, texts, or e-mails incriminating statements doesn't make those statements not incriminating.

In any case, John Hueston, who prosecuted Enron's top crooks, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, says it best in this morning's New York Times:

The verdict in the Bear Stearns fraud case has far-reaching implications for Wall Street execs, and it's all good — for them.

Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin were found not guilty in Brooklyn federal court of fraud and other charges related to their blatant lying about their hedge funds, which were built on the subprime-mortgage house of cards.

In the only federal prosecution so far of any of the goniffs who helped cause last year's Wall Street meltdown, they got away with murder (of their investors' money), if you read the last year's indictment. Even their participation in the homicide of Bear Stearns (their funds lost almost $2 billion) was blessed by the jury, which said the prosecutors didn't give them enough evidence.

According to the indictment, back on March 2, 2007, Cioffi and Tannin were freaked out by their funds' extremely shaky — even doomed — liquidity because the subprime mortgages underlying the CDOs they were peddling were collapsing. They drank "a vodka toast" privately just for surviving the previous month without having to fold their huge hedge funds, and they kept their worries to themselves, not even telling their bosses, apparently. To investors, however, they lied, saying everything was hunky-dory (lie) and that they were putting their own money into their funds (lie).

The next day, March 3, according to the indictment, Cioffi told Tannin that things could be worse: "[W]e have our health and families ... [w]e are not a 19-year-old Marine in Iraq. ..."

Another psycho doctor: Baruch Goldstein

The most damning info is laid out in this morning's WashPost, which reports that the Virginia mosque he attended in 2001 featured a hard-line, militaristic imam named Anwar al-Aulaqi, who lectured admiringly about the strategies of an al-Qaeda military leader.

Increasingly, Hasan sounds like another crazy, extremist doctor, Baruch Goldstein, who slaughtered 29 praying Muslims and wounded 150 more in a suicidal, homicidal attack at a Hebron mosque in February 1994. Goldstein was a devotee of nut case radical Jew Meir Kahane. See this 2001 article for more on the extremist ultra-Orthodox Jewish movement in America that helped fuel Goldstein.

U.S. extremist Jews continue financing terroristic Jews in Israel. Remember crook lobbyist and ultra-Orthodox Jew Jack Abramoff? As I pointed out in September 2005, he funneled some of his ill-gotten funds to Jewish extremists in Israel who hunt Arab "rats."

No doubt extremist Muslims in the U.S. are doing the same thing for terroristic Muslims overseas. Just something to keep in mind as Hasan's links to radical Muslims are explored.

In any case, one of the clues dug up about Hasan should have disqualified him from treating any soldier: He cared for a bird he owned "by placing it in his mouth and allowing it to eat masticated food," as the NYT notes this morning.

Anyone who has had extensive experience with psychiatrists (as I have) would have seen that as a clue that this guy should have had his doctorate yanked.

Humorous fallout from the New Jersey corruption scandal involving politicians, rabbis, body parts, public works and contractors: Former Bergen County Democratic Chairman Joseph Ferriero, convicted about a week ago on federal corruption charges, gets to vote Tuesday because he hasn't yet been sentenced.

As a good Democrat, he would probably vote for Jon Corzine in the gubernatorial race, because Corzine's foe, Chris Christie, was the U.S. attorney who prosecuted Ferriero. But neither Corzine nor Christie is much of a bargain, so what's a crook to do?

Matt Friedman explains at PolitickerNJ.com that New Jersey law allows felons to vote until the time of their sentencing. Ferriero isn't the only pol on this list. So if Republican Christie were to lose the gubernatorial race against incumbent Democrat Corzine by only a few votes, the goniffs would have the last laugh.