OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Congressional Record/Volume 167/Issue 4/House/Counting Electoral Votes/Pennsylvania Objection Debate/Cawthorn Speech

​Mr. Cawthorn. Madam Speaker, as I said in my convention speech, I want a new generation of Americans to be radicals—to be radicals for freedom and for liberty, but not radicals for violence. I am bitterly disappointed by the protest that happened yesterday. The actions of a violent few were cowardly and pathetic, and I am not afraid to call it out.
The Republican Party is a party of limited government. It is the big tent party. It is not the party of destruction.
Madam Speaker, the oath I took just days ago demand that I speak out in defense not of one President or another, but in defense of a hallowed document that has safeguarded this Republic for over 200 years. The Constitution grants power solely to State legislatures to determine how elections are carried out. When other officials who are not vested with constitutional authority usurp their role and grind the Constitution under their heel, I must object.
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Our Nation is a nation of resilience. In Valley Forge, George Washington prayed for a republic to be formed from the ashes of a monarchy. At Gettysburg, Americans gave their lives to defend a very simple idea, that the American democracy that had been earned with the blood of their forefathers would not perish due to internal division.
Then, on the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, American servicemen gave their lives to defend this Nation’s freedom from fascism.
What unites each and every generation of Americans is the idea that those who submit themselves to the authority of government ought to have a voice in that same government.
We are Americans here in this Chamber and in this country. But what does it really mean to be an American? It means believing in the rule of law. It means speaking up in defense of our founding principles and in defense of the Constitution.
Being an American means that you are proud of your country but that you never beat your chest. And being an American means that sometimes you must stand alone while others sit.
Now, obviously, I can’t stand, but trust me, if I could stand, I would stand in defense of our Constitution today.
# Congressional Record/Volume 167/Issue 4/House/Counting Electoral Votes/Pennsylvania Objection Debate/Dean Speech

​Ms. Dean. Madam Speaker, this is a sad day for America—a day of shame, a day of ignominy, an attack on this Capitol, an attack on our country.
Madam Speaker, our words matter. Mobs, thugs, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists attacked our government with the aim of attacking our free and fair elections.
Make no mistake, these terrorists came armed, armed with false flags; armed with hate; armed with weapons; and, tragically, armed with lies force-fed to them by those at the highest level of government, including some from the legislative and, yes, the executive branches. Incited by the one at the highest level of government, they attacked people, property, this Capitol, this cathedral of democracy.
Words matter. In his last words to our Nation and to all of us here, our dear colleague, John Lewis, wrote last July: “Democracy is not a state. It is an act.” And each generation has an obligation to preserve its institutions.
Democracy is a series of acts, acts by you and by me, by citizens, one building upon the other and another—not acts that we have heard and seen and suffered today, words and acts to incite violence, acts that tear at the very fabric of our democracy.
Madam Speaker, yet, I have hope. We, too, are armed. We are armed with the facts. We are armed with the truth. We are armed with the love of our country. We are armed with our sworn oaths. And we are armed with our precious Constitution.
We have faced tyranny and insurrection before. We are here tonight to herald to America and to the world: We will defend our democracy, and we will endure.
Madam Speaker, when I came into work this morning, as I was preparing to come to the floor, I read Tom Friedman’s op-ed, which began with the words from the Gospel of Mark: For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world but lose his soul?
For what shall it profit any man.
Madam Speaker, I urge my Republican colleagues to have the courage to uphold their oath, courage like that of Congresswoman Margaret Chase Smith, a lifelong Republican and the first in her party to speak out against McCarthyism. Putting duty over fear, she said: “I do not want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear. Surely, we Republicans are not that desperate for victory.”
Madam Speaker, for today, we have seen the cost of victory by such means. It shook the very walls of this building. Our colleagues know there is no truth to this challenge.
For what shall it profit a man.
Madam Speaker, it has been my solemn honor to participate in this sad day. I pray for our country.
# Congressional Record/Volume 167/Issue 4/House/Counting Electoral Votes/Pennsylvania Objection Debate/Greene Speech

​Mrs. Greene of Georgia. I would like to point out that all the cases that have been thrown out have been thrown out on standing, not the evidence of voter fraud. I would also like to point out the same people who, for 4 years, have failed to find a shred of evidence to convict President Trump of Russian collusion are the same people trying to discredit hardworking American poll watchers who are risking perjury by signing affidavits confirming massive voter fraud in multiple States.
The same fake news who took the word of Christine Blasey Ford against Justice Kavanaugh, who her own friends denied happened, also dismissed the sworn under penalty of perjury accounts from people who witnessed the election fraud.
The same fact-checkers who told you that Dominion machines weren’t connected to the internet and couldn’t be hacked are the same people telling you that there has been no voter fraud and no violations of election law. But it has been proven that these machines are connected and that they can be hacked.
We have heard repeatedly argued that objecting to these ballots is unconstitutional and violates the rights of State legislatures. They would rather us affirm fraud and pass the buck back to States rather than following the process Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, and the Framers of the Constitution designed.
When States fail to do their job, we are the last line of defense. Congress is here for this exact situation. We are here to be the fail-safe when States refuse to protect the people’s votes.
By objecting today, we are telling the thousands of witnesses who signed affidavits that we have their back, and we will not allow local officials who violate their own election laws to steal this election from those who lawfully voted.
# Congressional Record/Volume 167/Issue 4/House/Counting Electoral Votes/Pennsylvania Objection Debate/Budd Speech

​Mr. Budd. Madam Speaker, mob violence is not representative of our country or of this building. The American people—at least the ones who are still up watching right now—have seen this body return to a peaceful debate. And that is the American way. So let’s get back to that debate and let’s talk for a moment about Pennsylvania.
For decades, absentee voting was reserved for members of the military and citizens who are medically or physically unable to get to the polls. But in 2019, Pennsylvania dramatically increased the amount of ballots that would be cast in the Presidential election through expanded, no-excuse, mail-in voting.
On September 17, Pennsylvania’s Democrat-controlled Supreme Court violated the Constitution by extending the deadline to receive mail-in ballots. Article II states that legislatures, not the courts, determine the time, manner, and place of their States’ elections. But Pennsylvania’s high court directed the State officials to assume that non-postmarked ballots were received on time without any evidence that they were sent before election day.
On October 23, while early voting was already underway, the State supreme court ruled that election officials did not have to authenticate signatures for mail-in ballots.
To sum it up, Pennsylvania officials illegally did three critical things:
One, they radically expanded vote by mail for virtually any reason.
Two, they removed restrictions when a ballot can be sent in.
Three, they removed signature verification on those very ballots.
Just this week, the Pennsylvania Senate pleaded with Members of this body to delay certification until the Supreme Court resolves these disputes. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania violated their own constitution. They violated the U.S. Constitution. They opened the door for thousands of unverifiable ballots.
Because they failed to guarantee the integrity of their votes, I cannot consent to accepting Pennsylvania’s electoral votes.
# Congressional Record/Volume 167/Issue 4/House/Counting Electoral Votes/Pennsylvania Objection Debate/Davidson Speech

​Mr. Davidson of Ohio. Madam Speaker, every one of us swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. I swore that oath in uniform, and the first part of that oath is the same as what we swear here in Congress.
The last time we needed to defend our Constitution against a domestic ​enemy, we fought a civil war. And at the conclusion of that Civil War we passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments that make clear that no State is so sovereign that they can deprive their citizens of equal protection of the laws.
When it comes to elections, that means one person gets one vote. It doesn’t mean that other citizens can dilute the votes of other citizens and deprive them of equal protection. And it doesn’t mean that a State can do that by law or by practice.
So whether the law was changed and made it such that there is no way to provide equal protection—one person, one vote—or the practice was corrupted, it cannot stand. Frankly, lastly, it must guarantee that there is a proof that it was equal protection under the law.
None of that happened in a number of States. The people of America, tens of millions of them who came out to vote, have been unheard by this body and by far too many courts. We need to show them the respect they are due by the Constitution of the United States of America, the Constitution that we fought to sustain to end the era of Jim Crow to pass civil rights legislation, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and so many other pieces of jurisprudence.
# Congressional Record/Volume 167/Issue 4/House/Counting Electoral Votes/Pennsylvania Objection Debate/Duncan Speech

​Mr. Duncan. Madam Speaker, this process we are going through today isn’t about personalities. This isn’t about Joe Biden or Donald Trump. As hard as some try to paint it that way, let me say that names and personalities don’t matter. This is, gravely, about the Constitution of the United States.
Almost 20 years ago, after the attacks on 9/11, Americans were persuaded to give up some of their constitutional liberties. Using the justification of that global crisis, the terrorist attacks on that fateful day, America saw the erosion of their liberties for the safety and security many felt they may receive through the USA PATRIOT Act and other resulting processes too many felt would keep us safe from another attack here on our shore.
This year, using the justification of the global pandemic, COVID–19, we once again saw our Nation’s Constitution violated. You see, the Constitution is clear in Article II, Madam Speaker, that the power and duty to set the manner of national elections rests solely with the State legislatures.
That power doesn’t rest with us. That power didn’t rest in the hands of unelected county election officials, secretaries of state, or a supreme court but, rather, in the hands of the State legislatures, which pass laws setting the manner of elections held in their States.
This year, using the extraordinary circumstance of the COVID–19 pandemic, we witnessed these duly passed laws circumvented and usurped time and again, not by having the laws changed in the respective State legislative bodies, but those laws arbitrarily ​and unilaterally changed by county clerks; secretaries of state; and, in this case of Pennsylvania, an elected supreme court, which is supposed to interpret the law, not make law.
When those nonlegislative entities change the laws without getting the general assemblies to change the law, in my opinion, the resulting ballots cast, either by mail or in person, those ballots were illegal under the law.
Illegal ballots should not be counted. Therefore, the resulting electoral votes should be considered invalid.
What bothers me is that so many of you are okay with that, that so many Americans, because their person won, you are okay with the manner in which that victory was gained.
It is politics. Look, I get it. But we didn’t swear an oath to play politics. We swore an oath to the United States Constitution. As George Washington said: The Constitution is the guide which I will never abandon.
# Congressional Record/Volume 167/Issue 4/House/Counting Electoral Votes/Pennsylvania Objection Debate/Evans Speech

​Mr. Evans. Madam Speaker, I represent the Third District of Pennsylvania, which includes part of Philadelphia, the birthplace of America. It was in Philadelphia that the Constitution of the United States was written and signed, the very Constitution that we are all sworn to uphold as Members of the House of Representatives.
We are elected to serve our constituents, and it is our job to represent them and their interests in Congress.
Yesterday, I spoke to the son of the late Dick Thornburgh, who is a two-time Republican Governor of Pennsylvania and was Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan and President Bush. His son stressed to me that his father would have wanted the rule of law to prevail regardless of the political outcome, because he cared more about the safeguarding of democracy than partisanship.
In addition, Al Schmidt, who was a Republican commissioner of elections, said, when Philadelphia certified its results on November 23: “I’m proud that the birthplace of our Republic held the most transparent and secure election in the history of Philadelphia.”
Instead of using this time to dispute the results of our fair and lawful election, we should be spending this time making sure vaccines are quickly given to essential workers and our most vulnerable communities, that people are getting housing.
We should look at rental assistance. We should ensure that that is available.
Small businesses, the engines of our economy, should be getting needed grants and loans.
That should be our focus.
Hospitals desperately need support and help. We should be paying attention to the needs of hospitals.
We are in the middle of a pandemic where hundreds of thousands of people are dying, and we are in a recession that is putting millions of Americans at risk of hunger, homelessness, or both. It is time we start legislating for the people.
One last person I want to mention is our junior Senator, Senator Toomey. There are very few things that he and I agree on, but he has stated very clearly that Joe Biden has won this election. He has stood up on the Senate floor and he has stated that.
So it needs to be very clear that the late Governor Thornburgh; Albert Schmidt, the commissioner; and our current junior Senator all have one thing in common: democracy first, partisanship second. Let’s keep that in mind.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bocland, Hugh de

​BOCLAND, HUGH de, or HUGH of BUCKLAND (d. 1119?), sheriff of Berkshire and several other counties, received his surname from the manor of Buckland, near Faringdon, of which he was tenant under the monastery of Abingdon. Before the death of William Rufus he was already sheriff of Berkshire, and he is stated in the Abingdon history to have been one of the persons who profited by the unjust transactions of Modbert, whom the king appointed to administer the affairs of the monastery in the interest of the royal revenues, during the period when the office of abbot was vacant. He was ordered by Henry I to restore to the abbey the possessions which he had in this manner wrongfully obtained. Notwithstanding this, the Abingdon historian gives Hugh a high character for uprightness and wisdom. The same authority states that he was held in great esteem by Henry I, and that he was sheriff of eight counties. Six of these the evidence of charters enables us to identify, viz. Berkshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, and Middlesex. It is sometimes stated that Hugh de Bocland was justiciar of England, but this assertion is extremely questionable. It is true that he is so described in the copy of Henry I's charter of liberties, which Matthew Paris quotes as having been read to the barons in 1213; but in the obviously more accurate copy of this charter given by the same historian under the date 1100, the designation of justiciar is wanting. The Abingdon chronicle also speaks of Hugh as 'justiciarius publicarum compellationum;' the precise import of this expression, however, is not clear. The statement in Foss's 'Lives of the Judges' that he was canon of St. Paul's is probably erroneous, although his name occurs (without date or reference to any authority) in the list of prebendaries of Harleston in Newcourt's 'Repertorium,' i. 151. He witnessed a St. Albans charter dated 1116, and also another charter of the same abbey, which Mr. Luard assigns, apparently on good grounds, to the year 1119. As we find from the Abingdon history that William de Bochelande (presumably a son of Hugh) was sheriff of Berkshire in 1120, it may be inferred that Hugh de Bocland died in 1119. ​Another Hugh de Bocland, who may have been a grandson of the subject of this article, was sheriff of Berkshire from 1170 to 1176, and was one of the itinerant justices in 1173 and 1174.
[Chron. Mon. Abingdon, ed. Stevenson, ii. 5, 43, 117, 160; Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. ed. Luard, ii. 115, 552, vi. 37; Rymer's Fœdera, ed. 1816, i. 9, 10, 12; Foss's Lives of the Judges, i. 107, 219.]
H. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bodkin, William Henry

​BODKIN, Sir WILLIAM HENRY (1791–1874), legal writer, son of Peter Bodkin, a member of a family long connected with the county of Galway, was born at Islington 4 Aug. 1791. His mother was a Sarah Gilbert of Lichfield. He was educated at the Islington Academy. He was married in 1812 to Sarah Sophia, eldest daughter of Peter Raymond Poland, of Winchester Hall, Highgate. In 1821 we find him hon. secretary to the Society for the Suppression of Mendacity. He was called in 1826 to the bar by the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, of which society he afterwards became a bencher. For several years he went on the home circuit. He practised largely in criminal business at the Middlesex, Westminster, and Kentish sessions, and at the Central Criminal Court. He was made recorder of Dover in 1832. In the intervals of legal employment he busied himself, in his capacity of secretary to the Society for the Suppression of Mendacity, with the poor laws. He wished to encourage the systenatic giving of relief, but at the same time to extirpate the gross abuses to which the poor laws had been liable in his time. At the general election in 1841 he was returned to parliament in the conservative interest as the colleague of Mr. J. Stoddart Douglas in the representation of Rochester, defeating Lord Melgund, afterwards Earl of Minto. by a narrow majority of two votes. He was himself defeated by Twisden Hodges and Ralph Bernal [q. v.] at the next general election in 1847. He twice unsuccesstully contested the city of Rochester, having lost his seat through supporting Sir Robert Peel's free-trade measures. It is to Sir William Bodkin that the statute is due by which irremovable poor are made chargeable to the common fund of unions. Sir William's act was passed for one year only; but it has been continued and extended, and is, in fact, the foundation of the present system. In 1859 he was appointed assistant judge of the Middlesex sessions. In ​1865 he married again (his first wife having died in 1848) Sarah Constance, daughter of Joseph Johnson Miles, J. P., of Highgate. In 1867 he was made a knight. Owing to an attack of cancer in the cheek, he resigned his office, some weeks before his death, to Mr. Edlin, Q.C. He died, aged 83, 26 March 1874, at his house, West Hill, Highgate, and was buried in the Highgate cemetery. For many years Sir William Bodkin was counsel to the treasury, and the president of the Society of Arts, of which he was one of the earliest and most zealous members. He was also a deputy lieutenant of Middlesex and chairman of the Metropolitan Assessment Sessions.
He is the author of: 1. 'Brief Observations on the Bill now pending in Parliament to amend the Laws relative to the Relief of the Poor in England,' London, 1821. 2. 'A Speech delivered at a Meeting of the Constituents at the Crown Inn, Rochester,' 8 Sept. 1841.
[Debrett's House of Commons, &c. 1872, p. 423; Cooper's Men of the Time, 8th ed.; Hampstead and Highgate Express, 28 March 1874; Times, 25 March 1874; Brit. Mus. Catal.]
J. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Boden, Joseph

​BODEN, JOSEPH (d. 1811), lieutenant-colonel in the East India Company's service, founder of the Boden professorship of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford—whose name is spelt Bowden in Dodswell and Miles' ‘Lists of the Indian Army’—was appointed lieutenant in the Bombay native infantry on 24 Nov. 1781. He became captain on 25 Oct. 1796, major on 12 Oct. 1802, and lieutenant-colonel on 21 May 1806. His name was borne at various times on the rolls of the 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 9th native infantry, and he held successively the offices of judge-advocate, aide-de-camp to the governor, quartermaster-general, and member of the military board at Bombay. There is no record of his field-service at the India Office. He retired from the service in 1807, and died at Lisbon, whither he had gone for the benefit of his health, on 21 Nov. 1811. On the demise of his daughter his property went to the university of Oxford, under conditions recorded on a tablet placed by his executors in Trinity Church, Cheltenham, which bears the following inscription: ‘In a vault beneath this church are deposited the remains of Eliz. Boden, who died 29 Aug. 1827, aged 19 years. By her decease the residuary property of her father, the late Lieutenant-colonel Joseph Boden, H.E.I.C. Bombay Establishment, now in the Court of Chancery and valued at 25,000l. or thereabouts, devolves to the University of Oxford, and, according to the following instructions extracted from his will, is to be “by that Body appropriated in and towards the erection and endowment of a professorship in the Sanskrit language at or in any or either of the Colleges of the said University, being of opinion that a more general and critical knowledge of the language will be the means of enabling my countrymen to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India in the Christian religion, by disseminating a knowledge of the Sacred scriptures among them, more effectually than by all other means whatever.”’ The offer was accepted by the university in convocation on 9 Nov. 1827, and the first election took place in 1832, when Professor H. H. Wilson was appointed to the Sanskrit chair. Four Sanskrit scholarships in connection with the same endowment were founded by decrees of the Court of Chancery in 1830 and 1860. Boden never wrote a book of any kind and was not himself a Sanskrit scholar (Monier Williams, in Notes and. Queries, 5th ser. v. 414).
[India Office Records; Dodswell and Miles' Indian Army Lists; Notes and Queries, 5th ser. v. 414, 458; Gent. Mag. lxxxi. 2, 589; Gloucestershire Notes and Queries (London and Stroud), i. 2.]
H. M. C.