Those of you who page through the Bay Area section of the Chron on your way to the funnies may have noticed the words "nepotism" and "cronyism" buzzing around the name "Mabel Teng." For those of you still reeling from the five-million-part (and continuing) saga of Julie Lee (latest: her lawyer says she has no comment about where all that money went!) and Kevin Shelley (latest: his employees were asked to do Democratic party work with nonpartisan funds!), you're probably too afraid to even start looking at the Mabel Teng stuff.

That's what we're here for -- incomplete summaries of complicated political transactions! Details after the jump.

A new SFist column summarizing randomly-selected news items in local politics that catch our eye. We're hoping the new snappy title will allow you to skip these stories more efficiently in the future.