Last week, we continued trying to figure out why Sarah Palin quit her job. We could think of a couple reasons! And today, the New York Times seems to throw its weight behind one of those reasons.

We phrased it as, "She Just Hates Governing." Today's Times story on the days leading to Sarah Palin's resignation suggests that "she just hates her life, and Alaska, and is not very good at governing" might more accurate.

So what happened is Sarah continued to be obsessed by every single petty attack against her, real or perceived, by any enemy, from any corner. When she talks about how she was unable to focus on helping Alaska because the governor's office was bogged down in frivolous ethics complaints, what she means is that she was personally consumed with everything bad said about her.

Like, here is one of those all-consuming ethics complaints that were hurting Alaska:

By all accounts, Ms. Palin became consumed with the complaints, no matter how small-bore - which many were - or where they came from. When a local Democratic blogger accused her of becoming a "walking billboard" by wearing a jacket emblazoned with the logo of Arctic Cat, her husband's team sponsor at the Iron Dog snowmobile race, she issued a news release titled "Governor Comments on Latest Bogus Ethics Complaint." "Yes, I wore Arctic Cat snow gear at an outdoor event, because it was cold outside," her statement read. A follow-up release was triumphantly titled "Ethics Complaint on Governor's Apparel Dismissed."

So, yes, Palin was fixated on attacking local bloggers, on responding to everything Levi Johnston said and did, and on taking on a late-night comedian for making a dumb joke. The Republican Governors Association tried to send an aide up to help her out, and party bigwigs tried to help her set up a PAC and a legal defense fund, and meanwhile the Alaska legislature just wanted her to govern, and Palin could not really handle all of those things, at once, and so she quit. But not before she randomly fired someone who annoyed her, again, because that is her style.

Dr. Butler said he resigned his post in June in part because the administration asked one of his highly regarded division heads, the state public health director, Beverly Wooley, to resign. "I felt that it was not a good time to be downsizing," said Dr. Butler, who is now working on a swine flu vaccination at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Butler said the governor's office apparently deemed Ms. Wooley insufficiently supportive of the parental consent bill backed by Ms. Palin. Ms. Leighow would only say, inexplicably, that Ms. Wooley had been terminated by the health department, not the governor.

At least we can be confident that, while Sarah Palin has quit politics, she will never quit being a petty, thin-skinned liar, surrounded by sycophantic enablers.

And she will certainly not disappear from the public eye as long as Levi Johnston remains free, and on television!

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And we are pretty sure we will continue to hear even more from Levi, in the coming weeks!

[Photo: Runner's World]