Character Frequency using Python

# show the frequency of characters in a string
# Python24 and higher   by HAB

text = """Turd floats:

A Charlotte, NC lawyer purchased a box of rare and expensive cigars,
then insured them against fire and theft. Within a month, having smoked
all those great cigars and without having made even his first premium
payment on the policy, the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance
company. In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were lost "in a
series of small fires."

The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason:
that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion. The lawyer
sued and won!"""


# create a character:frequency dictionary
cf_dic = {}
for char in text.lower():
    cf_dic[char] = cf_dic.get(char, 0) + 1

print "Characters sorted by ASCII number:"
# create a sorted list of keys
key_list = sorted(cf_dic.keys())
for key in key_list:
    # don't show space and newline
    if key not in " \n":
        # associate the value with the key
        print "%2s  %3d" % (key, cf_dic[key])

print

print "Characters sorted by frequency:"
# convert cf_dic to list of (k, v) tuples with cf_dic.items()
# flip tuple elements to (v, k) using list comprehension
# then sort list of tuples (order is v,k), highest v first
value_key = sorted([(v, k) for k, v in cf_dic.items()], reverse=True)
for vk in value_key:
    # don't show space and newline
    if vk[1] not in " \n":
        print "%2s  %3d" % (vk[1], vk[0])

print

print "Characters sorted by frequency (method 2):"
# using list of (k, v) tuples, operator.itemgetter() and sorted()
# establish sort key: index of tuple element key = 0, value = 1
import operator
index = operator.itemgetter(1)
# create list of (k, v) tuples from dictionary
key_value1 = cf_dic.items()
# sort list of (k, v) tuples by v, highest v first
key_value2 = sorted(key_value1, key=index, reverse=True)
for kv in key_value2:
    # don't show space and newline
    if kv[0] not in " \n":
        print "%2s  %3d" % (kv[0], kv[1])