IN: Clifford Bundy Stearns Sr. (born April 16, 1941) was the U.S. Representative for Florida's 6th congressional district from 1989 to 2013. He is a member of the Republican Party. On August 14, 2012, Stearns lost to veterinarian Ted Yoho in a four-way Republican primary by about 1 percent of the vote.

As Chairman of the Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Stearns conducted the first-ever oversight on taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the United States. National Public Radio reported, "Planned Parenthood is the nation's largest single provider of abortions, yet it gets millions of dollars in federal funding with which to provide other services.".  The investigation was started in response to an investigative report released in July 2011 by the pro-life organization Americans United for Life (AUL). According to AUL, "Audits of Planned Parenthood affiliates in California, New Jersey, New York, and Washington State demonstrate a pattern of overbilling and abuse involving Medicaid funds, and in at least Washington even charging drugs used in an abortion as 'family planning.' Furthermore, State audit reports and admissions by former Planned Parenthood employees detail a pattern of misuse of federal funds by some Planned Parenthood affiliates."  The investigation was sweeping, requesting internal audits dating back 12 years and state audits for the past 20 years for the national organization and all 83 of its affiliates. Representative Henry Waxman questioned the political motivations for the timing of the investigation, saying, "Your fervent ideological opposition to Planned Parenthood does not justify launching this intrusive investigation."  On January 31, 2012, The Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization stopped funding Planned Parenthood, stating that the congressional investigation by Stearns triggered a newly created internal rule about not funding organizations under any federal, state or local investigation. (Planned Parenthood is regularly audited to ensure compliance with the Hyde Amendment: these audits have never turned up any evidence of wrongdoing.) While the move was applauded by conservative religious and pro-life groups, it was denounced by several newspaper editorials, women's health advocacy groups, and politicians. Four days later, Komen's Board of Directors reversed the decision and announced that it would amend the policy to "make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political". Several top-level staff members resigned from Komen during the controversy.
QUESTION: Were there any other things they investigated?
IN: Eugene Louis Vidal was born in the cadet hospital of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, the only child of Eugene Luther Vidal (1895-1969) and Nina S. Gore (1903-1978). Vidal was born at the West Point cadet hospital because his first lieutenant father was the first aeronautics instructor of the military academy. The middle name, Louis, was a mistake on the part of his father, "who could not remember, for certain, whether his own name was Eugene Louis or Eugene Luther". In the memoir Palimpsest (1995), Vidal said, "My birth certificate says 'Eugene Louis Vidal': this was changed to Eugene Luther Vidal Jr.; then Gore was added at my christening [in 1939]; then, at fourteen, I got rid of the first two names."

In the multi-volume memoir The Diary of Anais Nin (1931-74), Anais Nin said she had a love affair with Vidal, who denied her claim in his memoir Palimpsest (1995). Vidal also said that he had an intermittent romance with the actress Diana Lynn, and alluded to possibly having fathered a daughter. Yet, regarding Nin, in the online article "Gore Vidal's Secret, Unpublished Love Letter to Anais Nin" (2013), author Kim Krizan said she found an unpublished love letter from Vidal to Nin, which contradicts his denial of a love affair with Nin. Krizan said she found the love letter while researching Mirages, the latest volume of Nin's uncensored diary, to which Krizan wrote the foreword. Moreover, he was briefly engaged to the actress Joanne Woodward before she married the actor Paul Newman; after marrying, they briefly shared a house with Vidal in Los Angeles.  In 1950, Gore Vidal met Howard Austen, who became his partner for the next 53 years. He said that the secret to his long relationship with Austen was that they did not have sex with each other, "It's easy to sustain a relationship when sex plays no part, and impossible, I have observed, when it does." In Celebrity: The Advocate Interviews (1995), by Judy Wiedner, Vidal said that he refused to call himself "gay" because he was not an adjective, adding "to be categorized is, simply, to be enslaved. Watch out. I have never thought of myself as a victim... . I've said - a thousand times? - in print and on TV, that everyone is bisexual".  In an interview with Esquire in 1969, Gore said "Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality. Notice I use the word natural, not normal." Commenting his life's work and his life, he described his style as "Knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn."  In the course of his life, Vidal lived at various times in Italy and in the United States. In 2003, as his health began to fail with age, he sold his Italian villa La Rondinaia (The Swallow's Nest) on the Amalfi Coast in the province of Salerno and he and Austen returned to Los Angeles. Howard Austen died in November 2003 and in February 2005 his mortal remains were re-buried at Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington, D.C., in a joint grave plot that Vidal had purchased for himself and Austen.
QUESTION:
Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?