On Capitol Hill, the Senate confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor begins today. If confirmed, Sotomayor will become the nation’s first Latino justice and only third female justice. Here in New York, the Bronx neighborhood where she grew up is celebrating that one of their own could soon have a lifetime seat on the nation’s highest court.

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr.: “We know collectively in the City of New York that she is a person that has never forgotten her heritage, her culture, where she comes from. It makes me happy that whenever she gives speeches outside of New York that she always talks about where she is from, from the Bronx, from the projects in Bronxdale, that she’s a Nuyorican.”

Monsignor James White of the Blessed Sacrament Church in the Bronx also praised Sotomayor.

James White: “For the students, just knowing that there’s hope, that they can be whatever they want to be, if they put the work into it. And as I said, evidently she worked very hard and just gave a lot of hope in the future to the community, especially to the Bronx, because sometimes people think the Bronx is other than what it is, but it gives them a lot of hope.”