Abdon Pallasch of the Chicago Sun-Times reports that Antonin Scalia did not hold back (big surprise, I know) in a talk yesterday before the Federalist Society, slamming the University of Chicago Law School, where he used to teach, for tacking to the left:

After Scalia left the school, it hired now-Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and started offering classes like Obama's popular "Current issues in Racism and the Law."

Scalia never mentioned Obama or any other professor. But Scalia bemoaned the proliferation of exotic law classes in the country's law schools.

"I took nothing but bread-and-butter classes, not "Law and Poverty," or other made-up stuff, Scalia said to laughter. He said his advice to law students was: "Take serious classes. There's so much law to learn. Don't waste your time."

The question posed to Scalia was what he thought of the ideological change at the University of Chicago Law School since he was a teacher there.

"I regret it," Scalia said. "I don't think the University of Chicago is what it was in my time. I would not recommend it to students looking for a law school as I would have years ago. It has changed considerably and intentionally. It has lost the niche it once had as a rigorous and conservative law school."

A bit later on we run across this classic Scalia-ism:

"What did I learn at Harvard Law School or at my practice in Ohio or in the federal government that qualifies me to determine whether there ought to be - and therefore is - a right to abortion or to homosexual sodomy or a right to suicide?" Scalia said. "I don't know any more about that than Joe Six-pack."