This never would have happened at the Olympian, but Rick McKinnon of Olyblog tracked down Robert Schumacher, a sailor serving on the USS Olympia who not only blogs, but now blogs at Olyblog. And, if that doesn’t surprise you at all describes himself as a “mainly liberal Democrat.” Take that, Ira Knight.

Obviously, the conversation with Rob at Olyblog went almost directly to the Nuclear Free Zone ordinance that the Oly Council recently passed. Rob the submariner had this to say initially:

Interestingly enough on the submarine blog I co-contribute to, one of the topics today was Los Angeles-class sub relations with namesake cities. I wasn’t really familiar with the NFZ issue until a few weeks ago when I reported to Olympia and my buddies at the sub blog let me know about it (most of them are very conservative and had…opinions…on the issue).

…I’m part of the engineering department, a reactor operator by rate, and I can tell you there is a night-and-day difference between nuclear weapons and nuclear power. While I’m pretty liberal myself, I think nuclear energy (for purposes like electrical power generation) is a great way to go, if managed and given the proper oversight. I can’t speak to civilian nuclear power, but I can tell you the Navy has an unparalled record of safety and success with it’s plants, both shipboard and land based.

Read the entire conversation, its a great take on the entire NFZ and the entire situation surrounding the USS Oly.