A look at the major newspapers for Sunday, shows The Washington Post leading with its study of farm subsidies, discovering many of the 1996 farm bill’s beneficiaries haven’t farmed anything in years. The New York Times leads with its analysis of the just-completed U.S. Supreme Court term, examining why Chief Justice John Roberts wasn’t better able to corral the other justices during his SCOTUS rookie season. The Los Angeles Times predicts the GOP will lean on the war on terror as its primary election-year issue, providing a handy primer for anyone who hasn’t bothered to notice American politics in the last five years. The federal government spent at least $ 1.3 billion since 2000 on farming subsidies for nonfarmers, the WP reports. The 1996 farm bill tied subsidies to simply owning land that was used for farming in the past, regardless of what it is now used for, the paper found. The upshot is some homeowners collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in government cheese over the last decade simply for having big backyards. The story runs online with an interactive map breaking down farm payments by county, along with several other graphics.

Chief Justice Roberts’ dreams of a unified and acrimony-free court quickly evaporated as the term dragged on, leaving Roberts in dissent nearly as often as in the majority on major nonunanimous decisions, says the New York Times. The NYT acknowledges the court was more conservative this year, chiefly because Justice Samuel Alito joined the bench, but it wasn’t the slam dunk some Republicans had hoped for. The NYT attributes that, in part, to Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court’s lone swing vote. Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, rebuffed the conservative voting block on a number of key issues, including last week’s military tribunal’s decision. The LAT, under the fold, and the WP, going inside, agree with the Kennedy hypothesis, proclaiming him the new Sandra Day O’Connor. The Los Angeles Times roots its election-year analysis (such as it is) in the Supreme Court’s Guantanamo decision, which brought a flurry of stump speeches from both sides of the aisle. The paper says Republicans may not be seeing the same support for their national security agenda they saw in previous elections, but that the public still prefers their plan to Democrats’, which the paper paints as being unprincipled. The paper warns, however, that Republicans could easily overplay their hand if they don’t watch their campaign rhetoric. Everyone fronts the truck bomb that killed more than 60 people in a Baghdad marketplace Saturday, though each paper does something a little different with the news peg. The WP puts the death total at 66, focusing on how events like this could hurt Iraqis’ confidence in their newly formed government. The LAT (with a body count of 77) looks at how large-scale insurgent attacks like this one could hurt Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s attempt to grant amnesty to some insurgents. The NYT low-balls it at 62 killed and attributes Saturday’s attack to anti-American sentiment among Iraqis.

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