Cooking-Out with Justice Sotomayor I received lots of calls about the picture with Justice Sotomayor, people wanting to know when it was taken, where, etc. So I thought you may want to see more, to see who else was there. I must tell you that the cook-out was the Justice's idea. During her confirmation hearings, Alex Rodriguez and Bettie Baca had a cook-out in their back yard in Virginia for Justice Sotomayor, and the Justice commented that she would like to do it again when the process was all over. So immediately after she was sworn in, Justice Sotomayor attended the cook-out, hosted by her longtime friends, Alex and Bettie, who are amazing people in their own right. The cook-out was primarily for her family. The Justice's mother is truly someone to admire. She just radiates a mother's pride when you mention Justice Sotomayor. Also there were a few key people from the Administration who assisted her during the confirmation process and a few neighbors who stopped by. And then there were the rest of us - Congresswoman Nydia Velasquez, Mari Carmen Aponte, Carmen Lomellin, George and Kathy Munoz, and my wife Elena. It was an afternoon I will never forget. I just couldn't help but think about the thousands of people, many of whom many of us may not have known, who struggled for this day. I thought about those who worked so hard to get President Obama elected. And I thought about those who worked so hard in support of the confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor as the 111th Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, the third woman, and the first Hispanic. These are truly amazing times!