On Monday morning, insideSTL.com will debut two new sections: STL Blues and STL Politics.

We're pleased to announce Brad Lee of St. Louis Game Time Magazine will be covering the Blues for insideSTL.com in the new STL Blues section. Brad has been writing for the incredibly popular St. Louis Game Time Magazine and stlouisgametime.com for a couple of years, and he's a passionate, knowledgeable Blues' fan.

When we asked insideSTL.com readers to submit sample columns if they were interested in writing about the 2008-09 Blues, we received substantially more applications than we did for any other team not named the Cardinals. That's an illustration of the passion in the community for the Blues, and so we're fired up to be able to try and provide another outlet for Blues' fans to get information, humor, and commentary.

Brad's columns will appear throughout the week, and you can begin reading them Monday here on insideSTL.com.

The other section debuting is STL Politics...which will be, if I had to guess, a source of ugly verbal exchanges in the comments sections under each column. The goal was to get 2 conservative columnists, 2 liberal columnists, and 1 independent.

However, after reading the submissions and deciding on which ones we thought were best, we wound up with more independents than conservatives or liberals.

New columns will appear each day Monday through Saturday. All I asked our columnists to do is:

-keep the columns under 1,000 words.

-be honest.

-be yourself.

I want to continue to expand the site in a non-sports direction...all while continuing to grow the sports coverage/opinions/humor...if that makes any sense.

I know a number of people have submitted columns for restaurant reviews, movie reviews, and even poker, but we have to be careful in how quickly we expand. We don't want to become the NHL of websites.

Nonetheless, I'm quite confident that you'll enjoy---and be pissed off---by the additions to insideSTL.com on Monday with STL Blues and STL Politics.

Your feedback is always appreciated---positive or negative. So, please feel free to email me at tmckernan@insidestl.com.

Log-in to post your comments below, or you can email me at tmckernan@insidestl.com.