Of course the jokes are flying all over Texas -- what's the fine for shooting a lawyer? -- and so forth. Dick-Cheney-shooting-Harry-Whittington is fraught, as they say, with irony. It's not as though the ground in Texas is littered with liberal Republicans. I think the vice president winged the only one we've got.
Not that I accuse Harry Whittington of being an actual liberal -- only by Texas Republican standards, and that sets the bar about the height of a matchbook. Nevertheless, Whittington is seriously civilized, particularly on the issues of crime, punishment and prisons.
I think Molly forgets Bill Ratliff, who helped stave off DeLay's redistricting efforts. Or maybe we don't get to count him because he's retired. He felt "out of step with his party."
Now all we need to know why Whittington would hang out with Cheney, whose views on what goes on in prisons differs from Whittington's.