STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Congressman, thank you very much for joining us.
JIM KOLBE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: Would you give us a sense of what kind of a person Judge Roll was?
KOLBE: But he was just a - just one of these really gentle, kind people that you just couldn't help but like.
INSKEEP: When he had his own security, when he was in those sensitive cases involving guns or involving immigration, what did he talk of - did he talk about that, his security?
KOLBE: I don't think - no. He never did to me, talk about it. I think it was just one of those things that the marshals felt that there was a need for security because of the sensitivity of the case that he was handling. As you know, there's been - along the border there, with the drug cases, there's been a tremendous amount of violence. And they felt that there needed to be some protection for this individual.
INSKEEP: Although, if he was a judge's judge, I imagine he took that security and went ahead and ruled as he ruled.
KOLBE: He did. He was known for making very fair rulings. I think they were ones that generally got upheld. I don't - I have looked at the statistics - were very often usually upheld at the Ninth Circuit with the next level of appeal, because the rulings were good rulings.
INSKEEP: Mr. Kolbe, I want to ask about the broader political climate in which this shooting toke place. Now, we should emphasize, we don't really know the motives of the shooter. We just have pieces of the evidence. But the sheriff in Tucson did raise the question of the tone of political rhetoric in the time leading up to this shooting. What are your thoughts on that?
KOLBE: This looks, from everything we can see so far - and obviously, the investigation is going on. But from everything we can see, it appears that this is a very deranged individual who acted on his own without, seemingly, any kind of political motivation. Certainly nothing I've seen of his writings on Twitter and Facebook and elsewhere suggests that there was any kind of coherence to what he was doing.
INSKEEP: Yeah, coherence would be the word dismissing. There are certainly references to political text and so forth, but it's not clear what the motive would be.
KOLBE: Right.
INSKEEP: That said, you were talking about what you would say in a political seminar in that kind of situation. What would you advise Americans to do, going forward?
KOLBE: But, again, I want to emphasize, I don't think - I don't see a connection between what I'm saying there and this particular incident.
INSKEEP: Mr. Kolbe, thanks very much for joining us once again.
KOLBE: Thank you very much.
INSKEEP: Jim Kolbe was the congressman representing Arizona's Eight District. He's a Republican. He was replaced in that district by Gabrielle Giffords, who is recovering today.