Federal imprisonment for unpaid debt has been illegal in the U.S. since 1833. It’s a practice people associate more with the age of Dickens than modern-day America. But as more Americans struggle to pay their bills in the wake of the recession, collection agencies are using harsher methods to get their money, ushering in the return of debtor’s prisons.

NPR reports that it’s becoming increasingly common for people to serve jail time as a result of their debt. Because of “sloppy, incomplete or even false documentation,” many borrowers facing jail time don’t even know they’re being sued by creditors:

Take, for example, what happened to Robin Sanders in Illinois. She was driving home when an officer pulled her over for having a loud muffler. But instead of sending her off with a warning, the officer arrested Sanders, and she was taken right to jail.

“That’s when I found out [that] I had a warrant for failure to appear in Macoupin County. And I didn’t know what it was about.” Sanders owed $730 on a medical bill. She says she didn’t even know a collection agency had filed a lawsuit against her. [...]

A company will often sell off its debt to a collection agency, generally called a creditor. That creditor files a lawsuit against the debtor requiring a court appearance. A notice to appear in court is supposed to be given to the debtor. If they fail to show up, a warrant is issued for their arrest.

More than a third of all states now allow borrowers who don’t pay their bills to be jailed, even when debtor’s prisons have been explicitly banned by state constitutions. A report by the American Civil Liberties Union found that people were imprisoned even when the cost of doing so exceeded the amount of debt they owed.

Sean Matthews, a homeless New Orleans construction worker, was incarcerated for five months for $498 of legal debt, while his jail time cost the city six times that much. Some debtors are even forced to pay for their jail time themselves, adding to their financial troubles.

Stories of surprise arrests for unpaid debt have been reported in states including Indiana, Tennessee and Washington. In Kansas City, one man ended up in jail after missing only a furniture payment. The Federal Trade Commission received more than 140,000 complaints related to debt collection in 2010, and they’ve taken 10 debt collection agencies to court for their practices in the past three years.

Since the start of 2010, judges have signed off on more than 5,000 arrest warrants since in nine counties alone. Beverly Yang, a legal aid attorney, says many debtor’s — and judges — don’t know debtor’s rights, which results in the accused being intimidated into a pay agreement. She’s seen judges interrogate debtors about why they can’t pay more and whether they are trying hard enough to find a job.

Yang says some collection agencies are only too eager to use needlessly harsh tactics. “Whatever the creditors or the creditors’ attorneys can do to leverage some kind of payment, it will help their profits enormously because they have, literally, millions of these.” Debt collection is a lucrative business — the industry is set to grow 26 percent in the next three years.

In the wake of the 2010 elections, numerous GOP-controlled states have adopted so-called “voter ID” laws to target the entirely fabricated problem of in-person voter fraud. Such voter fraud is so uncommon that a voter is 39 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to actually commit fraud at the polls. Yet because these laws also disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in demographics that tend to support Democrats, they have become the darling of GOP lawmakers.

So it is much more disappointing than surprising that Pennsylvania’s Republican Gov. Tom Corbett is now pressuring lawmakers in his state to enact one of these vote suppressing laws, despite the fact that a top GOP lawmaker admits that there is no proof that these vote suppressing laws are needed:

Republicans continued Monday to press legislation to require Pennsylvanians to show photo identification before they vote, despite resistance from Democrats who say it is intended to suppress turnout of poor and black voters and Republicans acknowledging they lack proof of voter fraud.

Senate State Government Committee Chairman Charles McIlhinney said he has seen no proof that people are casting illegal ballots, but he also said he’s seen no proof that tightening the requirements would deny anyone the right to vote. He called the requirement a “security check.”

“It was put upon us and asked for by the governor and by the House, who passed the bill, and they asked me to take it up,” McIlhinney, R-Bucks, said after the committee vote. “I made the changes based upon what I felt I would accept to come out of the committee.”

So the GOP has no evidence whatsoever that voter fraud exists in Pennsylvania, yet they are pushing this bill through anyway. Sadly, America has seen this movie before.

With the Supreme Court’s decision to consider Arizona’s unconstitutional anti-immigrant law SB 1070 yesterday, GOP megalawyer Paul Clement emerged as one of the most significant advocates in any recent Supreme Court term. Clement is now lead counsel in the Arizona immigration case, in the Texas GOP’s redistricting challenge, and, of course, in the Affordable Care Act litigation. He is also charging the American taxpayer $520 an hour to defend anti-gay discrimination in lower federal courts — although this case has yet to reach the justices. If a high-ranking Republican somewhere in the country wants to screw up the Constitution, they’ve probably hired Paul Clement to help him do it.

Given Clement’s singular role as the Republican Party’s top litigator, it’s likely that he will be nominated to the federal bench if a Republican wins the White House while Clement is still young enough to be a viable nominee. Moreover, as a former United States Solicitor General and former law clerk to Justice Scalia, Clement certainly possesses the kind of resume that generally attracts a president’s attention. There’s only one problem — the Senate GOP just disqualified him.

Last week, the Senate GOP voted almost unanimously to filibuster Caitlin Halligan’s nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. And, while the GOP’s case against Halligan is disturbingly thin, Senate Republicans were clear about one thing — they blocked her because she argued controversial cases when she served as New York’s solicitor general. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell accused her of advancing a “dubious legal theory” because she once argued a position that the NRA disagreed with. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), explained that he opposed her nomination because Halligan “su[ed] gun manufacturers for the criminal acts committed with handguns.” And Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) ranted that arguing against the NRA’s position is “an activist approach.”

Now, let’s be clear, Halligan argued these cases because she was the Solicitor General of New York and a solicitor general’s job is to defend the government’s position on an issue regardless of whether or not they personally agree with it. Her involvement in these guns cases says no more about her stance on the Second Amendment than the fact that Bush’s solicitor general defended campaign finance reform proves that he is didn’t want to kill meaningful limits on corporate money in politics when he later argued the Citizens United case.

But, of course, as Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) once explained, senators “need to treat all nominees exactly the same, regardless of whether they’re nominated by a Democrat or a Republican president.” The Senate GOP has made it perfectly clear that an attorney who argues a controversial case cannot be confirmed to the federal bench — even if their decision to argue that case says nothing about their personal views of the law or the Constitution.

Should a future president nominate Paul Clement to be a judge, the Senate GOP’s own “Halligan Rule” disqualifies him from judicial service.

The GOP-controlled Ohio legislature recently approved a heavily gerrymandered Congressional map that gives Republicans an advantage in 12 of the state’s 16 congressional districts, despite the fact that the state is roughly evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. Moreover, according to newly released documents, Ohio residents can blame the Speaker of the House for turning many of their congressional elections into little more than a sham:

The correspondence includes a pledge by GOP Senate President Tom Niehaus to deliver “a map that Speaker Boehner fully supports.” … As the unveiling of the Republicans’ congressional map neared, [Boehner campaign staffer Tom] Whatman was averaging a request a day, including a suggested boundary change affecting the Canton-based Timken Co., led by a prolific Republican political donor.

“Guys: really really sorry to ask but can we do a small carve out down 77 in Canton and put Timken in the 16th (district),” Whatman wrote on Sept. 12. After the request is approved, Whatman replies, “Thanks guys. Very important to someone important to us all.”

Ohio voters shouldn’t only blame Boehner, however, for engineering this map intended to ensure Republican victories regardless of what the people of the state want. Much of the blame also rests with the Supreme Court, which largely abdicated oversight over politically motivated gerrymanders in a case called Vieth v. Jubelirer.

Ohio’s voters are not completely powerless against this transparent power grab, however. The Ohio Democratic Party is circulating petitions seeking to place the map on the ballot in 2012 — allowing voters to strike it down just like they struck down Gov. John Kasich’s (R-OH) assault on Ohio workers.