Just for the record: the trip the UNC basketball team took earlier this week to Washington D.C. to meet President Barack Obama at the White House was not funded by taxpayer dollars.

The trip cost $30,496 and was paid for by the Educational Foundation - or 'Ram's Club,' - which raises money for the athletic program, according to Steve Kirschner, UNC's sports information director.

There were about 50 people in the traveling party, including Chancellor Holden Thorp, Athletic Director Dick Baddour, 17 team members, six team managers, Coach Roy Williams and three assistant coaches, and a handful of other athletic department staffers in ticketing, strength and athletic training and sports information.

Thorp, Baddour, Williams and several others brought their spouses on the trip as well.

AP photo

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama loved the gifts the North Carolina Tar Heels gave him Monday, but he had one more request for the 2009 national basketball champs.

"If somebody could please present me a jump shot, I need one of those!" Obama quipped in a celebration ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House.

Obama, a fervent basketball fan who grew up playing hoops in Hawaii, told his visitors they'd all done pretty well since he famously scrimmaged with them during a North Carolina campaign stop in April 2008.

President Obama has tapped a UNC professor to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Robert Adler, a legal studies and ethics professor, is the pick. 

For more, click over to our Under the Dome blog.

UNC Chapel Hill has snared federal economic stimulus money to the tune of $17.5 million to develop a solar fuels research center.

The funding comes from the U.S. Department of Energy and President Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It will pay for an interdisciplinary research center to develop solar fuels for next-geneation photovoltaic technology, according to this UNC press release.

The UNC project is one of 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers being funded at American universities and research insitututes, and the only in North Carolina. It is one of 16 to receive stimulus money for job creation.

 The project will involve UNC faculty from chemistry, physics and astronomy. Scientists from N.C. State, N.C. Central and Duke universities, as well as the University of Florida, will collaborate as well.

The American Association of University Professors has decreed that universities ought not tuck tail in the face of public outcry and rescind invitations to folks they've invited to speak.

The AAUP cites a handful of recent examples, perhaps most notably Notre Dame's snaring of President Barack Obama as its commencement speaker. The Obama invitation has bothered some within Notre Dame's catholic community due to Obama's support for stem cell research and views on abortion.

The rescinding of an invitation amounts, according to the AAUP, to an "infringement on academic freedom."

Here's the AAUP's statement. It does not mention UNC Chapel Hill specifically, but cites Desmond Tutu, who is giving commencement speeches at Michigan State and UNC-CH this spring.

The Anti-Defamation League has a problem with the Tutu selection.

Promoting his new book on MSNBC this morning, Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski said he admires the president but hopes he'll do more.

"President Obama has a very unique thing for a leader, and that is that he has the ability to inspire," he said. "I would like to see him inspire even more and not get beaten down by the day-to-day ... negativity that's involved."

For more on Krzyzewski's cable network appearance, go to The N&O's Under the Dome blog. And yes, the topic of Obama picking UNC in his NCAA Tournament bracket came up.

Fox News anchor Bret Baier has only been in the anchor desk at "Special Report with Bret Baier" since early January but the 38-year old newsman is already making headway in the Nielsen ratings at the 6 p.m. hour.

The former WRAL reporter - he spent two years in the Triangle before moving on to FNC in 1998 - recently spoke to The N&O about his journalism career. That story will appear in The N&O on Monday. Baier, born in New Jersey and raised in Atlanta, also opined on a few current issues for our blog audience:

You knew this call was coming.

President Barack Obama called UNC coach Roy Williams Tuesday night to congratule him on the Tar Heels' national championship victory over Michigan State, Under the Dome is reporting.

No word on whether the president ordered Air Force One to take a Chapel Hill detour for another pickup game.

It's a custom at Notre Dame to invite new presidents to speak at commencement.

This year, President Barack Obama accepted the invite, and not all Golden Domers are pleased. 

Many supporters of the Catholic university are bothered by Obama's recent decision to renew federal funding for embryonic stem cell research as well as his stances on other issues.

Here are the details.

President Barack Obama appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last night, for the purpose of spreading the word on his economic stimulus plan.

But that's not what people are talking about today.

During a conversation about Obama's poor bowling skills, he joked that his score of 129 "was like the Special Olympics or something."

That little wisecrack prompted an immediate apology to Special Olympics Chairman Tim Shriver, and it's getting all the press play today.