Bob Sager

19 years ago, a high school basketball coach put his team manager into a game for the final four minutes. The kid had never played a single minute of competitive basketball in his life. He scored 20 points. Jason McElwain was diagnosed with severe autism at age two. He didn’t speak until he was five. He couldn’t chew solid food until he was six. He wore a nappy for most of his early childhood. As a baby, he was rigid, wouldn’t make eye contact, and hid in corners away from other children. He tried out for his school basketball team every year and got cut every time. Too small. Too slight. Barely 5’6 and about 54 kilograms. But he loved the game so much that his mum called the school and asked if there was any way he could be involved. The coach created a team manager role for him. For three years, McElwain showed up to every practice and every game. He wore a shirt and tie on match days. He ran drills, handed out water, kept stats, and cheered every basket like he’d scored it himself. On 15 February 2006, the last home game of his final school year, the coach let him suit up in a proper jersey and sit on the bench. With four minutes left and a comfortable lead, the coach sent him in. His first shot missed. His second missed. Then something shifted. He hit a three-pointer. Then another. Then another. His teammates stopped shooting entirely and just kept passing him the ball. He hit six three-pointers and a two-pointer. 20 points in four minutes. The highest scorer in the game. When the final buzzer went, the entire crowd rushed the court and lifted him onto their shoulders. His mum tapped the coach on the shoulder, in tears. “This is the nicest gift you could have ever given my son.” McElwain won the ESPY Award for Best Moment in Sports that year, beating out some of the biggest names in professional sport. He’s 36 now. He works at a local supermarket, coaches basketball, has run 17 marathons including five Boston Marathons, and travels the country speaking about never giving up. When asked about that night, his coach still gets emotional. “For him to come in and seize the moment like he did was certainly more than I ever expected. I was an emotional wreck.”

🚨 Starmer is now coming after your end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like Whatsapp and iMessage. Things you say in your private conversations are about to become fair game for the government to arrest you over. It’s coming “within months”. Section 121 of the Orwellian  "Online Safety Act' that the Tories passed hands Ofcom the powers to compel any messaging platform to do 'client-side scanning' - meaning the tech firm must use "accredited technology" to scan your messages for content the government deems “harmful”. To start with it's child abuse and terrorism (of course - who could argue with that?), but make no mistake, before you know it all the things the police use as an excuse to turn up at people's doors for things they say on public platforms will be used to persecute citizens for things they say in private. ALL your messages will be scanned in real time as you send them. Not just suspicious ones, or flagged ones. Starmer is turning your phone into a real-time government informant. The government has been working to make encryption irrelevant for years, it's why Apple withdrew their Advanced Data Protection service from the UK - because they refused government demands  This is unprecedented territory for this country. Lord Hanson of Flint - who is leading this awful mission - has "set a date of April 2026" for Ofcom to enforce these powers. The era of private messages being private is about to come to an end. Reform will repeal this dystopian surveillance Act. My op ed in the Telegraph 👇

In a statement to ESPN, Major League Baseball said: “MLB contacted federal law enforcement at the outset of its investigation and has fully cooperated throughout the process. We are aware of the indictment and today's arrest, and our investigation is ongoing.”

We are deeply saddened by the tragic news of the passing of Cowboys’ Marshawn Kneeland. Our thoughts and prayers are with his girlfriend Catalina, family, friends and his teammates.