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Speaker Pelosi wore a symbol of her authority on her lapel.
a representation of the Mace of the Republic, or the Mace of the US House of Representatives.
The mace is modeled on an ancient weapon of the same name (think of an iron club).
House rules indicate that the speaker may direct the Sergeant at Arms to lift the mace and present it before an offender, to restore order to the House.https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...paign=trending
While history has no record that it has ever been used to actually club down the disorderly,
it has been removed from its pedestal a dozen or more times and held in front of offending lawmakers by the House sergeant-at-arms.
So great is the respect for it as a symbol of law and order that order was restored each time.
It was used twice in the 1890's in incidents involving Representative Charles L. Bartlett, a fiery Georgia Democrat who hurled a volume of laws at one colleague and brandished a knife at another.
House records indicate that the mace was last used to restore order during World War I when Representative J. Thomas (Cotton Tom) Heflin of Alabama, uncle of that state's current Senator, Howell Heflin, suggested that some of his colleagues had been unpatriotic in voting against a resolution to enter the war.
