There's a reason they call it the oldest profession.

As if there wasn't enough of this going on (metaphorically) in Congress, now we see that three men have been arrested on charges of operating a string of "high-end" brothels, including one just outside of the nation's capital. 

Authorities arrested three individuals accused of organizing a "high-end brothel network" that had been in operation since 2020 and whose customers included elected officials and military officers, a new indictment alleges.

Federal prosecutors announced that Han Lee, 41; James Lee, 68; and Junmyung Lee, 30 were arrested Wednesday morning after allegedly operating an "interstate prostitution network" including multiple brothels in Cambridge and Watertown, Massachusetts, as well as in Fairfax and Tysons, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. 

The defendants advertised the prostitution network on two websites, which, according to prosecutors, offered appointments with women in either Boston or Eastern Virginia and listed each woman's height, weight and bust size with nude and semi-nude photographs.

While no information on the accused perps has been released other than names, it's worth a bit of speculation; just look at the names: Han Lee, James Lee, and Junmyung Lee. Were these three American citizens? If not, where did they come from? What went on in their "high-end" brothels other than, well, the obvious?

In times of war, brothels have often served as very effective places to gather intelligence; recent history is replete with such examples. Was that going on here? Was there any connection, say, to a well-known national figure, who is known to have dealings with China, and has also been known to employ prostitutes?

A look at the customer list, apparently, was revealing.

Prosecutors say that the high-end brothel network serviced customers working in the following professions: "politicians, pharmaceutical executives, doctors, military officers, government contractors that possess security clearances, professors, lawyers, business executives, technology company executives, scientists, accountants, retail employees, and students."

Politicians, even. I wonder, do politicians get a discount, as a professional courtesy?

Some local governments, one might note, are tacitly approving of houses of ill repute and those who work in them, to the point of handing out subsidies; but then, these blue-state governments seem determined to spend taxpayer dollars to underwrite almost anything, so that's not really all that unusual.

Back to the three accused perps:

As of this writing, there is no information yet available about these three other than their names. But those names provoke some speculation. If China were to run an intelligence-gathering operation, in or near Washington D.C., how better could they go about it than to entice customers of a high-end cathouse into some pillow talk? Especially when those customers include politicians, military officers, government contractors with security clearances, business executives, and scientists. It may be the oldest trick in the book, that classic old honey trap, but it's an old trick because it works, and the next logical step in this investigation should be to examine that client list and determine what, if any, information may have been extracted during the course of... let's just say, business transactions. Find out who told what to whom, if any such did indeed happen, and if it did, at a minimum, revoke some security clearances.

There may be other fallout as well; if the customer list goes public, divorce lawyers in the DC area may be having a sudden windfall.