Last week the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center finally opened after six years of delays and bloated budgets, and most folks who work on the Hill were glad to have the thing done with at last. At the time, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) remarked that he was especially excited not to have to smell stinky, sweaty tourists waiting to get inside the Capitol anymore.

“My staff tells me not to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway,” said Reid in his remarks. “In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it’s true.”

Naturally, for daring to state the obvious, Reid came under fire from those who insist that they are the only people on Earth who never sweat and never emit gross body odor when it’s hot and sticky.

The kerfuffle actually led Reid to publish a letter to the editor in the Las Vegas Review-Journal yesterday explaining himself:

It is no secret that Washington gets terribly hot and humid during the summer, the peak season for tourists. Before the opening of this center, visitors to the Capitol were forced to wait out in the heat (or the bitter cold during the winter) for long periods of time before going through security and entering the building. The days of freezing in the cold and sweating in Washington’s humidity while waiting to enter the Capitol are over.

Yes, the majority leader of the U.S. Senate felt he had to reiterate that Washington, D.C. is hot and humid in the summer. It’s hard to know who deserves an eye roll more: Reid’s office, for bothering to write such a letter, or the people who complained so loudly that he felt compelled to take the time to defend himself.