OH-01 GOP Steve Chabot: Lawsuit Claims He Has Superhuman Powers

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- That's not U.S.Rep. Steve Chabot in the picture above. It's actor Claude Rains playing the Invisible Man in the 1933 science fiction classic. But a lawsuit filed against Chabot in federal court has the flavor of the movie -- it claims the Republican congressman has a cloak of invisibility that was developed as a secret weapon by the U.S. Air Force. According to the complaint, the weapon was invented at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton.

So far, no comment from Chabot, a conservative from Cincinnati's West Side who is seeking his seventh term. A constituent named James G. Carlton filed the civil suit last week in U.S. District Court in Ohio. Carlton -- who is acting as his own lawyer -- wrote:

"The plaintiff [he meant defendants] in this case have developed invisible and undetectable weapon and cloaking devices and invaded my house and privacy. They have doctors, hospital drugs, all down in some secrecy. They have used every office of local, state and federal to harass me. They aim to control the world. God help us all."

Chabot is not known for superpowers. He is somewhat notorious for a comb over, a hairstyle that has become a trademark. And if Chabot has a cloak of invisibility, he wouldn't have been accused -- wrongly it seems -- of being the congressman caught picking his noise and eating a booger on the House floor. That time, Chabot appears to have been the victim of a misguided fingering.