Monday, Katherine Kersten penned her last column for the Star Tribune. But it might be more accurate to say her last column for the Strib's Metro section.

Kersten said nothing about her future in print, but Monday afternoon, she left this comment on her "Think Again" blog:

Thanks, everyone. I’m still in discussions with the paper about continuing Think Again and writing a weekly column on the op-ed page as an outsider. These things take time.

So perhaps we can still get your fingers dirty on Kersten's copy after all — though she'd be Scott Gillespie's hot potato, not Nancy Barnes'.

It's old news that Strib management offered Kersten and Nick Coleman freelance (read: unguaranteed) opinion-section gigs as a lovely parting gift. However, weekly frequency is a new facet, and more regular than I expected.

On some level, it makes sense: local cultural conservatives deserve a place at the ops table, and the Strib has made Kersten that segment's highest-profile, highest-traffic tribune.

Then again, KK is a very familiar figure, having started her career as a Strib opinionator. Her particular interpretation of "first principles" makes her a bit, shall we say, repetitious. For readers, would the inevitable aspersions on gay families and selected Muslims go down any easier in ops?