A consumer group outraged over the Chrysler and General Motors bankruptcy deals it says will strip consumers of protections against defective vehicles is taking its message to the airwaves and internet.

The Ad Hoc Committee of Consumer Victims of GM & Chrysler today launched a television and online ad campaign aimed at urging President Barack Obama and Congress to amend the bankruptcy deals in order to allow products liability suits to go forward against the newly organized auto companies.

This move comes after another group of consumer and legal advocacy groups sent a letter to Obama urging him to halt the Chrysler and GM bankruptcy plans. Plaintiffs’ attorneys have also lambasted the plans, saying it leaves car owners without adequate rights and protections.

The new ad will air on television stations in Washington, DC and online on the group’s website.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you already  know it’s been a busy, busy legal news week in Washington. Here are a couple of other news items we haven’t mentioned yet:

Consumer retorts: A group of consumer and legal advocacy groups are urging President Barack Obama to halt the Chrysler and General Motors bankruptcy plans, contending that that they say will strip consumers of protections against defective vehicles. (Lawyers USA)

Cert-ain success: The U.S. Supreme Court grants approximately 1 percent of the 7,500 cert petitions it receives each year. So how do you make a petition stand out? Thomas Goldstein has some insight. (On The Record)

Sotomayor on the Second Amendment: Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor told a senator Thursday that she would follow a historic ruling affirming Americans’ right to own guns for self-defense, but pro-gun activists aren’t sold. (AP)

What a (debt) relief it is: Less than four years after the new bankruptcy reform law went into effect, the U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari to determine the constitutionality of some of the Act’s most controversial provisions. This fall, the justices will hear oral argument on who qualifies as a ‘debt relief agency’ and on what the required disclosures are for such entities. (Lawyers USA)

Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has unveiled his proposal to change bankruptcy laws. And his plan includes doing something Congress declined to do earlier this year: allow bankruptcy courts to renegotiate the terms of mortgages.

A similar provision in an early version of Congress’s housing rescue plan was dropped in April after the White House and some lawmakers opposed the plan.

Obama’s proposal would also remove some of the bureaucratic hurdles to filing for personal bankruptcy that were imposed in 2005, establish a nationwide “homestead” level of equity that would be protected from creditors, and impose a 120-day moratorium on credit reporting agencies reporting negative credit information.

In a speech in Powder Springs, Ga., Obama said the plan would particularly help military families and elders, creating a “fast-track bankruptcy practice” for military families, cutting paperwork and red tape for bankruptcy filing, and allowing elders to more easily keep their homes, which he called ” the cornerstones of a secure retirement,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Robert Lawless, an expert cited in Obama’s policy paper, but unconnected to the campaign, told the Wall Street Journal that the plan is ambitious.

“This goes as far as anybody who’s had the ability to get things enacted into law has proposed,” Lawless said to the WSJ. (Sub. Req’d). “It is more targeted, rather than saying, ‘I want to go in and undo the 2005 bankruptcy law.’ I don’t’ think there’d be any political interest in doing that.”

Tucker Bounds, spokesman for Republican opponent Sen. John McCain responded in a statement to the Associated Press: “Eighteen Democrats and John McCain worked together on the bipartisan Senate bankruptcy bill, and Barack Obama’s rigid partisanship and self-promoting political attacks show that he’s a typical politician - which is the problem in Washington, not the solution.”